


like tea made from rain

by lilithenaltum



Category: Good Girls (TV)
Genre: Beth's Pearls, Brio-Freeform, Cameo by Dean - Freeform, F/M, Falling In Love, Friends With Benefits To Lovers, Manifestation, Post-Episode AU: s01e09 Summer of the Shark, Soft Rio is Soft, cameos by the kids
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-24
Updated: 2018-10-29
Packaged: 2019-08-06 03:06:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 23,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16380239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilithenaltum/pseuds/lilithenaltum
Summary: Rio told Beth to go home, but not without making her a promise.One year later and she holds on to that promise, keeps it close to her chest, locks it up tight until the day she’s had enough and she digs her pearls from her dresser. The warehouse is abandoned and Beth knows it’s a long shot, but it’s all she has. She hopes for something, expects nothing, and gets everything-more than she could have ever imagined.It’s funny how the universe works, isn’t it?





	1. perlas

**Author's Note:**

> Playlist is on [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/user/melanimal/playlist/58wwpAHXd4SLbg8SPb0otp?si=OglNhSc6SuqDydRDVlgILQ)!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For Steph ❤️

Two months after he tells her to go home, she gets one last text message.

 

She knows it’s from him without even needing to text back and ask, the cadence of the message mimicking the cadence of his voice (she can’t get his voice out her head yet) and she mouths the words, short as they are, over and over until the text is burned into the back of her brain.

 

It’s not a lot, but it feels like everything and she lets out the first real breath in a long time (eight weeks, sixty days, two months, she hadn’t started counting the hours but she was close). She doesn’t say a word to Annie or Ruby. She doesn’t bring it up during girl’s nights in or the rare hen party out. She keeps it to herself, close to her chest, deep down in the pit of her heart. It’s in the same place she stores the memory of his gun on her chest, his hand on the back of her neck, the heat of him that close. She keeps it in a little vault locked tight along with the fantasy of him she’d developed and rewound and rewritten during her brief career as a money laundering housewife.

 

The day after she gets the message, she gets a package in the mail, no return address, though she doesn’t expect there will be. She knows what’s inside that package before she opens it, knows she’ll pull out a string of pearls that she had once hung on the door of an old warehouse one night. And she knows, along with the text message, that this is a promise that she can use if she ever needs to.

 

Beth puts the pearls away in her dresser drawer, tucked within tissue paper and under bills and photos and construction paper projects. Beside it is a folded slip of paper. It’s twenty years old, or older, she can’t remember. She only knows that one night she’d sat in the sill of her window of her childhood home and wrote down a future, a life she wanted to live and a description of the man she wanted to share that life with. Between then and now, she’d married who she thought that man was and given him four children (maybe the one thing he’d done right by her), and given up a career and a life of her own chasing a dream.

 

She doesn’t dwell on that paper much anymore, but she holds on to it for some reason. She can’t make herself throw it away, though she’s sure she should. She never got what she wanted out of that slip of paper, not the job or the house (although she does love the one she’s in and fights everyday to keep it), not the husband most definitely, and not even the twins she thought she’d get to have. She thinks about a life she thought she’d have and she blocks it out her mind for now, pushes the paper and her pearls further down to the bottom of the dresser drawer, and leaves it all alone.

 

But she holds onto that promise. It's worth more than any string of pearls would ever be.

* * *

 

 

Kenny doesn’t want a big birthday party this year and she’s secretly grateful because she doesn’t have the energy. Working two jobs is taking every bit of spare energy she has that isn’t dedicated to her babies or the custody battle she fights to keep them with her. She never realized Dean could be so vindictive. She should have guessed he’d try and take the only things in the world she really had left from her.

 

_You’ve taken everything from me, Bethy. Why shouldn’t I repay the favor?_

 

She wants to kill him, unapologetically, unashamed. She thinks if she could get away with it, she would do it, but even boring, unassuming housewives (normal, everyday people…) can’t get away with something like that. And Dean’s parents have paid for the best lawyer in Detroit while she’s using the cheapest she can possibly get but still can’t afford. Her lawyer doesn’t care. Beth is this close to not caring either, to packing up whatever she can fit in the van and grabbing her kids and disappearing across the border somewhere and never come back.

 

No paper trail, no notes. Annie might get a coded message after a few months. Ruby, a call a little while later.

 

But she also knows that Detroit is her children’s home and though he is a vicious, stupid son of a bitch, Dean is their father and they love him. So she keeps fighting and makes sure her house is clean and works two jobs so that there’s food on the table and the mortgage is paid and there’s gas for work and extracurriculars.

 

Occasionally, she thinks of selling everything in the house until she’s down to the bare bones and the kids’ beds. She doesn’t need her own, just a mattress on the floor and the settee that had been her great great grandmother’s. She digs through the papers in her dresser and organizes the bills in order of due date, then payment amount and straightens Emma’s little handicrafts, a small hand pressed to a brown sheet, splattered in oranges and yellows.

 

_It’s a turkey, Mommy!_

 

_Yeah...it is baby._

 

That makes her smile, enough that when her fingers hit smooth, round hardness, she’s thrown a little off balance. Almost by instinct, her fingers curl around the necklace and she lets the tips run along the pearls, her eyes slipping closed, her mouth opened as she feels the edges of the folded slip of paper beside them.

 

She wonders if she could sell the pearls for a decent amount. But she knows she won’t.

 

She closes her drawer and pushes the thought of them from her mind the way she has for months now, and with shaking hands, she goes through each envelope with each invoice and writes out a check for each one. She doesn’t have enough. She never does. But it’ll have to do and when she’s done, she pours herself a shot of whiskey, knocks it back and chases it with a glass of water.

 

It calms her nerves just enough that she can get ready for her next shift at the gas station.

 

* * *

 

It’s been almost a year since he told her to go home, but she hasn’t been counting the days. Not anymore.

 

Instead, she moves through life like she’s walking through water, her steps heavy, her eyes rimmed with red and exhaustion. Two jobs turn into three, including a side hustle making cupcakes for actual housewives without anything else to do but go to yoga and Whole Foods. A little part of her misses those days, halcyon in her memories when the relief shift at Zippy Stop runs late and it’s midnight before she gets home.

 

“You don’t have to do this, you know,” Annie tells her all the time, though there’s sympathy and knowing in her sister’s eyes. “You can always give Dean joint custody and I know he’d probably shoot you a bit of cash to help.”

 

It’s the little lie he’s told her over and over when she pushes for full custody, visitation for Dean, spousal support so she’s not wandering around her house with bags under her eyes from three hours of sleep between jobs. But it’s not worth it. It’s a slippery slope to being shut out her children’s lives, or the other ultimatum he gave her.

 

_Just let me come home, Bethy. We can start over._

 

She didn’t want to start over. She wanted to pretend she never knew a Dean Boland existed. She’d even gone back to using her maiden name again.

 

She doesn’t tell her sister any of this though. She just sighs and pulls her hair out of the ponytail she’s got it in, grimacing a little at the prickles in her scalp. It helps the headache she’s had all day, if only by a little, and she sighs as she sinks into the couch.

 

“I’m doing what I think is best,” she says, her voice tired but firm and Annie doesn’t push anymore. Instead, she gives her sister a sideways hug and curls up on the couch and watches Jerry Springer reruns until she falls asleep, until Beth is sure that she’s out cold and won’t notice if she slips out the house and into the night. Beth climbs the stairs to the kids’ rooms and check on them one by one, threading her fingers through Danny’s hair as he shifts in his sleep, and she feels her resolve solidify as she watches him.

 

This is for them. No matter what happens, this is for them.

 

It takes her only a minute to slip into her own room and get what she needs, hesitating for a second on the paper in the bottom of the dresser. She doesn’t need that, so she leaves it be, but the edge of the paper slides across her fingertips at an awkward angle and gives her a papercut, making her hiss and suck the finger into her mouth. She’s dealt with worse than this. And yet, a little papercut has her nearly in tears and she stumbles down the stairs with blood pounding in her head and a flutter in her belly.

 

She’s grateful the van doesn’t make much noise when she pulls out the drive, onto the street, the dark of a cold Detroit early morning making everything around her eerie and still. There isn’t much traffic this time of day, near to three a.m. and she remembers something her mother had told her late one night on a Halloween when she and Annie were still excited to dress up and trick or treat around their neighborhood.

 

_3 a.m. is called the witching hour. Never go outside during the witching hour._

 

There’s a fuzzy memory of why she shouldn’t, but it’s been years since she believed in fairy tales and myths so she doesn’t pay it much attention. But the quiet unsettles her a little, as she steps out of the van on tired feet and stares at the empty warehouse in front of her.

 

It’s been empty for a year now.

 

(One year, seven days, sixteen hours.)

 

(She hasn’t been counting. Not at all.)

 

It takes her forty eight steps from the van to the warehouse doors. They’re unlocked, the way she knew they would be, the way she’d expected. There’s nothing inside, but she knew that too, because why would there be? But the door handle is still where it should be. The code is still the same. The warehouse should be dusty and dirty for lack of care but it’s clean, so she knows he still comes through sometimes.

 

He’ll get her message then, just the way he said he would.

 

She pulls the pearls out her pocket and they glide through her fingers, over the already healing papercut, and she draws in a breath, presses one of the pearls right into the center and lets the pain flood through her.

 

And then she hangs them on the door and walks forty eight steps back to her van and drives home, her chest tight, her stomach fluttering violently because all she can do now is wait.

 

Beth gets to the front door of her home and realizes her headache is finally gone.

 

* * *

 

She’s off work from both jobs today, thank god, and the kids are in the backyard bundled up and throwing leaves at each other, so she leans against her dirty kitchen counter with yellow rubber gloves on and tries to catch a break. She’s been cleaning since early that morning. It’s a habit to wake before five now, because she’s so used to making the kids lunch and pressing her uniform for the hotel and then her button down for Zippy Stop, slipping on the first job’s outfit and then waking the children.

 

It’s Saturday, though, so no need to get them up for the morning. And she’s off, so no need to call Annie or Ruby or hunt down a babysitter from up the street if all else fails. She can clean, she can make her kids breakfast again like she used to, she can sit on her couch and watch TV until her mind rots if she wants while her babies play outside, safe and fed and taken care of.

 

It’s the first break she’s had in so long, she doesn’t know what to do with it. It seems as though the possibilities are endless.

 

Beth drains the dishwater, wipes down the cabinet, puts away the groceries Dean had dropped off that morning. He may not want to play fair in court, but he still makes sure her kids are fed, and for that reason, she doesn’t dwell too much on her desire to see him taken out. He’s not that bad without that lawyer of his whispering poison in his ear. At most, he’s mildly annoying.

 

When all that is done, she contemplates having sandwiches for lunch versus frozen pizza. She doesn’t get a chance to head to the freezer and pull a Digiorno back out and preheat the oven because there’s a shadow on the fridge that wasn’t there before and the air feels electric and she knows.

 

She feels time slow to almost nothing when she turns and the first thing she sees are the black of his jeans, then the hem of his hoodie, the span of his arms crossed over his chest, the black ink of his eagle tattoo. She feels flushed when she sees his lips, wants to slide to the floor at the quirk of his mouth, does everything possible to skip right up and over his head, but she can’t.

 

She catches his eyes and her heart stops and everything inside her that’s been lying dormant for a year (one year, sixteen days, she doesn’t know the hours, she can’t even remember what day it is now) comes flooding to her face and she almost thinks she’ll break down and cry.

 

Thank god for little mercies.

 

“You rang, Mama?”

 

And then she does cry. And she doesn’t have the energy to be bothered by it either. She lets the tears, big fat tears, roll down her cheeks and she crosses the kitchen to him and stands right before him, presses her lips together so the sob doesn’t come out.

 

“ _You came_.”

 

* * *

 

Rio doesn’t say anything about her crying. She expects him to make some little comment about it but he never does. He stands beside her in her kitchen as she drains her second glass of chardonnay and the oven preheats and listens to her talk about the custody battle and the divorce and her two and a half jobs. There’s cupcakes on the counter, ones she’s got to deliver tomorrow for Gretchen Caldwell’s daughter’s birthday party, and he laughs when she bats his fingers away from them as he reaches out to grab a pink one.

 

“Don’t fuck with my money, Rio,” she tells him, her tears long gone and a lightness in her chest because he’s this close to her and he smells so good, like leather and chocolate. She wonders what kind of cologne he wears. She thinks she’ll ask him one day.

 

One day. She really hopes they have a one day.

 

He holds his hands up in mock surrender and graces her with a smile so devious it makes her belly flip. “Ain’t touching nothing. I’m not tryna have my fingers broken.”

 

There’s a moment that passes where all he does is stare at her, watch her watch him, his eyes traveling along her throat and neck to her faded sweater and the look in his eye is unreadable. But she can tell he disapproves. He makes a sound in the back of his throat and shakes his head.

 

“You ain’t been eating.”

 

“Haven’t had much time.”

 

She hasn’t had much appetite, really, and all the groceries are for the kids first and foremost. She snatches a little here and there. She’s used to the hunger now. In a way, it fuels her to keep going. If she’s still hungry, she isn’t working hard enough.

 

“Car man got you out here working yourself to death cause he don’t wanna see about his kids?”

 

He sounds angry. She thinks that it shouldn’t thrill her, warm her, but it does. She almost smiles.

 

“No, it’s nothing like that. Dean’s a piece of shit, but he at least keeps them fed. He wants joint custody, though.”

 

Rio raises a brow and shakes his head. “Nah. Then he’ll push for full custody and visitation from you. And you’re their damn mama. What kind of asshole-”

 

“He wants me back.”

 

“He don’t deserve it.”

 

“No.”

 

“Glad we’re on the same page then,” he says and he reaches into the pocket of his hoodie, pulls out a fat envelope. Beth glances at it then back to him and her mouth falls slack.

 

“What is-“

 

“Look. I told you that if you ever needed my help to call for me. You did. So this is what that is.”

 

Beth blinks stupidly in the waning light and shakes her head.

 

“Rio, I can’t take that”, she says in a whisper. It’s a lie and they both know it. She can take that, she should take it. Whatever she does, it’s for them. Wasn’t that what she’d said when she’d dropped the pearls off at his warehouse? So why is she trying to act like she’s got pride now?

 

“Oh, don’t worry. I’ma make you pay me back.”

 

For some reason that makes her feel less shitty about taking his money, so she places her hand over the stack and hesitates for only one more second, then slides it off the island and stuffs it into the utensil drawer. She’ll go deposit it in her near empty bank account come Monday morning, right before her shift at the hotel.

 

  
“What do you want me to do?”

 

“Hmm?”

 

“You know.” She clears her throat. “To pay you back.” At this point she’s ready for just about anything.

 

“Oh. Well, you ain’t workin’ for me no more,” he says, as if to clarify something and she supposes it does. “I meant what I said back then. No more jobs.”

 

Beth presses her lips together and closes the drawer, shooting him a glance. “I don’t know how much you gave me, but it’s going to take me a while to pay you back the normal way,” she says. “I hope you’re not charging interest.”

 

“Nah. I don’t charge interest to friends.”

 

Friends? She must look confused beyond belief (she is...she had only hoped he’d come, not anything more) because he chuckles and raises her chin with his finger, and she draws in a shaking breath. Fuck. All he has to do is touch her and she’s lost.

 

“Yeah...if you’re okay with that.”

 

“I didn’t think you even liked me,” she says, though the evidence that says otherwise lies in the drawer with her silverware and can opener. “I mean, you called me a charity case.”

 

He rolls his eyes as if that wasn’t the most hurtful thing anyone had said to her up until that point. Because it is, though she won’t tell anyone else that. No one needs to know what kind of power his words had over her.

 

“Ah, come on now, darlin’. I ain’t even mean it like that.” He shrugs, though there’s a little bit of an apology is his gaze, in the line of his mouth, and she drops her eyes to his full bottom lip. She wants so very badly right then to suck it into her mouth and make him moan. She’s out of her mind. “I was just mad, is all.”

 

“Oh.”

 

“I mean, you hit me in the face with truck keys.”

 

“Yeah.”

 

She had. She still feels like an idiot for that. But he had no right testing her like that, getting her adrenaline up and making her insides churn for no damn reason. She’ll probably always hold a little grudge for that.

 

“How about this...you take the cash, pay up all your bills, get rid of one of those shitty ass jobs of yours. And I’ll call it even if you say you’re sorry.”

 

Beth blinks. “That’s...that’s it? I just say I’m sorry for...well, for what?”

 

He tilts his head up so she can see the faintest hint of a scar on his chin, right dab where she’d hit him with those damn keys. She almost giggles. He’s that vain that she has to say sorry for something that probably didn’t even hurt that bad?

 

“I mean, yeah, that was kind of mean of me. But that’s it? That’s all you want?”

 

It can’t be all he wants, because she doesn’t want it to be. She wants to work her one job and her cupcake hustle and pay off her loan-she assumes that’s what this is-a little at a time so she’d have to see him over the course of however long it’ll take her to pay this off. She’s greedy like that. It’s probably not fair to him, considering he’s got other things to do and all of them far more important than her.

 

But he’d come out here and snuck in her house and brought her a stack of god knows how much money so she could get back on her feet, just because she’d hung a string of her pearls on the door of the warehouse, so maybe she meant something. Or maybe he wanted more.

 

She wanted him to want more so badly.

 

And when he narrows his eyes, his lips quirking up into a slow seductive smile that takes her breath away, she knows he does and god, she should be careful what she asks for because she’s not sure if she’s ready for that.

 

If that’s what he wants, that is.

 

“I’ma let you decide on that.”

 

“Huh.”

 

“Tell me you’re sorry, Mama, and you can figure out the rest. We’ll say an apology is...half.”

 

Beth swallows and thinks of a dozen different ways she can make up for the rest. And if he’s down, then she’s more than down.

 

“Okay.”

* * *

 

She doesn’t see him again for another week, but this time at least she knows he’s coming back. In the meantime, she organizes her bills once more and pays them off in full, save for the mortgage, so that she still has two grand leftover for herself.

 

Twenty thousand goddamn dollars, and half of it cleared simply because she’d told him she was sorry.

 

The other ten...well, she wasn’t sure what she was going to do to clear that up. He’d made it plain, right before he left, that he didn’t want her cash, so she could only assume he wanted something else in return. The fire in his dark eyes spoke enough that she didn’t have to ask. She knew. And he knew she wouldn’t deny him anything. Not when he’d leaned down and kissed her cheek and she’d sucked in a breath so sharp it could cut ice.

 

She was already gone for him and he knew it.

 

Another Saturday but this time she’d had to work the Zippy Bee. Unbeknownst to her manager, it was her last shift there. She couldn’t take another day of that greasy starched shirt or the rude customers or the shit pay. So she’d tucked her keys into an envelope and left them on the desk in the back before she clocked out with a spring in her step. She had cupcakes to make that night, but nothing much else on the agenda and Dean had the kids for the weekend, so she would have the house mostly to herself, only Buddy for company.

 

He’s already in the house when she gets in, sitting in the dining room like he owns the place. Maybe, in some way, he does. His twenty grand had helped pay the mortgage for almost a year, had paid off her minivan, and gotten her son a brand new pair of sneakers. If he wants a seat at her table, she’ll make him a golden plaque and put it on the very chair he’s sitting in now.

 

Rio’s seat. It makes her want to laugh.

 

“Good night at work?”

 

She shrugs, sits her purse on the china cabinet and takes the seat beside him, a sigh leaving her lips at how much her feet ache.

 

“I quit, so...yeah.”

 

“Good. The hotel treatin’ you okay?”

 

“They’re fine.” He’s asking so he’ll know if he needs to tell her to stay or not. She thinks it’s incredibly sweet, but he doesn’t need to worry about her now. She’s fine. She’s got this.

 

“Hmm. Maybe you can get a lil’ rest then.”

 

Beth snorts out a laugh and turns her head to look at him in the light of the dining room. In this light, he seems to glow, a halo of gold around his head and she thinks it’s ironic in more ways than one. The man is no angel, not by any means. God only knows what kind of shit he’s gotten into in his life and the kinds of things he’s had to do to get where he is. He’s got more red in his ledger than she cares to know about. But she wants him anyway, blood or no blood.

 

 _Let it stain me too_ , she thinks, as he leans forward and brushes a lock of golden red hair out her face.

 

“I like your hair long like this. It suits you.”

 

She smiles in spite of the headache that’s been thrumming in her skull since that afternoon. “It’s cheaper to let it grow out than get a haircut. I haven’t even gotten it colored. Costs too much.”

 

Rio makes a face and hums as his fingers slip from the strands of hair. “You mean you’re not really a redhead?”

 

“I am,” she clarifies, reaching up to pull her ponytail loose. It draws a groan from her chest that catches his attention and that attention makes her feel reckless. She wants him to look at her like this all the time. “I lighten it.”

 

“Why?”

 

“Why?” She scoffs as if he should already know. He probably doesn’t, though. He’s never been called Chuckie before and laughed at. “I’ve been teased far too much about my hair in my life to consider keeping it as bright as it normally is.”

 

“Okay, and? All them losers don’t matter no more. Let it grow out, Mama. Red looks good on you.” He’s scooting the chair over closer until he’s right in her face and she’s aware that she’s still holding her hair up, her scrunchie on her wrist and her arms going numb, but she doesn’t care. Rio is a fraction of an inch from kissing her and she doesn’t know if she’ll survive that right now.

 

What a way to die, though.

 

“Does it really?” she asks, cause she wants to hear him say something like that again. She realizes then that she’s starved for attention and affection and compliments, that though men still look her way in the grocery store and leer at her in the corridors of the hotel when she comes to clean, that she hasn’t had anyone tell her that she’s beautiful or special or even that her hair looks good its natural red in so very long. It makes her feel both pathetic and a little bit angry.

 

“Mmhm. Grow it out for me, huh? We’ll consider that part of your payback for that second half.”

 

And that reminds her then of what she’d wanted to ask when she saw him next.

 

“What made you give me that much money? Twenty thousand, Rio? I would have been fine with five!”

 

She would have been fine with just a grand at that point, enough money for gas and to keep the lights on for another month and probably a little left over to get the dishwasher fixed. And she isn’t looking a gift horse in the mouth-well, a loan horse-but still. Twenty thousand dollars is a lot of money for a lot of people.

 

“You woulda paid off the mama van and still been strugglin’ trying to get ahead. 20 wasn’t a problem.” He’s still so close and if Beth quits wiggling out of nervousness, she could feel his breath ghost her mouth. She wonders what his breath tastes like; probably good tea and gum and maybe cigarettes if he smokes. But he doesn’t look the type.

 

“It’s still a lot of money,” she tries to argue, because sitting down and just taking that kind of cash was still jarring and she wrestled with whether she should do something, anything, in order to just give it right back. An apology didn’t seem fair enough to cover half of that.

 

“It’s whatever.” He pulls back a bit and she feels like she’d lost something. The sensation makes her head spiral a bit and she blinks in the dining room light, tries to keep her bearings. “I mean, if it helped you, it’s not too much.”

 

And there it is.

 

“Why?”

 

“Cause you needed it.”

 

“No.” She shakes her head, finally letting go of the ponytail and letting her arms fall. Her hands fidget in her lap. “I meant, why me?”

 

Rio is silent for a very long time. At least, to Beth, it seems like a long time. He looks away and leans back in the chair and she lets the quiet of her mostly empty home soak into her skin. Down the hall, Buddy snuffles in his sleep and there’s the sound of a car on the street, the hum of her refrigerator in the kitchen nearby.

 

But otherwise, there’s nothing. Her heart beating, yeah, her pulse throbbing along in a sluggish, almost drowsy pace. All the tension she feels in the air between them and somehow, she can manage to be this detached and lethargic. She blames the long shift and the lack of sleep, because otherwise she thinks she’d be gripping her chair in frenzied, almost girlish anticipation of something.

 

What was it that she really wanted?

 

She couldn’t separate the idea of wanting Rio with wanting to taste Rio, wanting to touch Rio, wanting him to capture her and command her and enthrall her in the most basest of ways with the simple pleasure of just being close to him. And she couldn't get used to how much she considered being close to him a pleasure. He was dangerous and ruthless and hard, the kind of man women like her were trained from birth to avoid, to sidestep, to not even acknowledge. And here she was, in that ugly Zippy Bee button down, with her hair hanging haphazardly across her shoulders and her collarbone too pronounced, her eyes too dark and drawn, sitting next to him at her dining room table and wanting nothing more than to suck his lips into her mouth and wrap her entire body around his.

 

Of course, it’d been a long, long time since she’d gotten any, so maybe that was the problem. She thinks she can fool herself with this for as long as it takes him to tell her why he really is helping her.

 

When he finally turns his head, his eyes are heavy and his jaw tight, one long, slender hand sliding across the table until just the very tips of his fingers touch her bare arm. She sucks in a slow breath and lets the feeling wash through her. He’s warmer than she’s used to, but she likes the heat, craves it even. She feels like a flower laying dormant for the winter, stretching toward the first rays of the spring sun. But Rio isn’t springtime, he’s blazing summer, the kind of hot that can scorch if one isn’t careful.

 

God, she’s so tired of being careful. She just wants to burn for once. Happily. Indulgently.

 

“Tell me why you think I’m helping you,” he says and she wants to groan because he still refuses to just give her a straight up answer. But he’s always been happy to push her buttons and coax her out of her comfort zone. He won’t give her the answers. He wants her to find them. Annoyed, aroused, and aching she snorts out a laugh and drags her fingers through her hair, watching him from the corner of her eye to see if his eyes drop to the dip in her shirt that reveals just a little of her ample cleavage.

 

They do. She almost smirks.

 

“I think,” she starts, letting her hair fall once more and crossing her legs casually, “that you just have a soft spot for charity cases.”

 

He grins. “You ain’t never gonna let that go, are you?”

 

She shrugs. “I could be persuaded to.”

 

“20 g’s ain’t enough?”

 

She shakes her head. “No.” He raises a brow and opens his mouth to say something else, but she cuts him off with a forefinger to his chest. He stalls and glances down to her finger, then back to her, and his eyes dance dangerously between hers and her lips and she knows what he’s thinking. At least, she thinks she does. She’s pretty sure she’ll never know exactly what’s on his mind. And she finds that irresistible. He’s a mystery she wants to unravel a piece at a time.

 

“I just want one thing,” she says quietly, and now her heart pounds and her blood speeds up because she’s doing this, she’s talking life by the balls and she’s making a choice and she’s not playing it safe. She’s doing what she wants for once and it feels so good.

 

“Yeah?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“What’s that?” He tilts his head and licks his lips and Beth flattens her hand in the soft fabric of his dark hoodie, twists her fingers around until she’s got a good grip. She pulls him close, so close his eye lashes brush across her cheeks and their noses bump and she thinks she hears him gasp just a little. It makes it a little difficult to focus on what she’s doing. But she only needs to get one word out and somehow, she does.

 

“This.”

 

And then she kisses him.

 

* * *

  
He doesn’t taste like anything she expected. There’s no tea on his tongue, no cigarettes, just the strange, almost salty sweet taste of him. He tastes like skin, like warmth, like the air at night after a thunderstorm. He tastes good and she wants to drink him down without wasting a drop.

 

She kisses him like she hasn’t kissed anyone in years, and sadly, she realizes she really hasn’t. The last time Dean really kissed her, really and truly, was before Emma was born on a night out that never happened again. And even then, though she’d loved him back then and had leapt at the idea that they were falling back in love again, he didn’t taste like this. He wasn’t anything at all like _this_ and she pushed the thought of her ex husband far from her mind, opened her mouth a little more and moaned into Rio’s mouth when his tongue slipped across hers.

 

All the while her hand keeps tangled in his hoodie, the soft cotton slipping through her fingers as he moves with the kiss. Everytime he pushes she pulls and two warm hands grasp at her knees, tug her closer still until she’s wrapping her arms around his neck and he’s pulling her into his lap. Their lips disconnect for a breathless moment and she opens her eyes to look into his, coffee dark, just as addictive. Beth thinks her heart will thump its way out her chest as she struggles to breathe. He lips feel raw, hot and swollen and she licks them unconsciously. There’s a question on her tongue, a dare, the desire for him coursing through her veins like the strongest liquor, and it smothered any fear she thought she’d have asking him for this.

 

“You sure about this?” he asks.

 

He sounds like he’s been sleeping, his voice so gritty and so deep that it makes her body shudder. She thinks she could probably get off by the sound of his voice and a well placed thigh between her legs and she’s tempted to test out this theory. Maybe he’ll talk dirty to her and kiss her neck and hold her hips steady as she rides his leg. Or maybe he’ll want to dig his fingers into the flesh of her hips and pull her up and down on his dick while her hands are tied behind her back and her hair spills across her breasts.

 

She wants to find out.

 

“Surprisingly,” she says, out of breath and light headed, “yes.”

 

And that’s all he needs.

 

He hauls her up from the chair, his hands slipping across her waist as she stands on shaky knees, and grabs her waiting hand.

 

“Show me your room.”

 

She almost laughs because he’s seen it before, has been in it before, has argued her down in that very bedroom before. But he’s never really seen it seen it. He’s never been in it with her, not for the sole purpose of sucking on her skin and making her gasp out his name. And, she thinks, as she takes the lead and pulls him up the stairs, he’s making sure she wants this, that this is her idea, that he can’t be blamed in the morning for pressuring her into something she didn’t truly want.

 

There would be none of that, she can assure him. She wants this. She’s never been so sure about something in all her life.

 

She steps through the threshold of her bedroom and thanks groggy, sleep worn Beth from that morning that she’d made the bed. Not that it really matters in the long run, because if she has her way, he’ll ruin her sheets and mess up the bed and put dents in the wall from the headboard. The thought sets her body on fire.

 

When she turns, he kisses her again, hard and a little deeper than before, though it’s still not rushed or harried. He takes his time, lets his hands wander up her shirt and across her skin. She can feel every callous on his palm, and she gasps into his mouth when his nails scratch a soft line from the waistband of her jeans to her bra strap. He does that over and over, pushes his hips into hers, lets his mouth trail away from her lips to her chin and he nuzzles the soft skin of her neck.

 

“You smell like a taquito,” he says into her ear and Beth bursts out laughing.

 

“I need a shower,” she mumbles against his jaw. She pauses for a beat, pulls back just enough that he can see her eyes.

 

“You can join me, if you want.”

 

She pulls away, hand sliding across his chest, and his eyes follow her as she begins unbuttoning her shirt. She leaves a trail of clothes from her bed to the bathroom, down to her underwear by the time he moves from the spot he’s rooted in and follows behind her.

 

“Nuh uh,” he says, pressing a kiss to her bare shoulder, his hands smoothing across her belly and then to her hips where her fingers have slipped into the waistband of her panties. “That’s my job.” He swats her hands away and tugs them down himself, kneeling as he does so, his mouth kissing a line up her calves to the backs of her knees as he drags the panties down. Teeth graze the sensitive skin of her thighs, a wet, hot tongue laves over the marks he makes, and her holds her steady as she rocks a little on her feet.

 

“I thought I smelled,” she moans, when his nose nuzzles the cleft of her ass and her thigh, and she can feel the vibrations of his laugh against her skin.

 

“You do. You smell like food.” He hums a little in his throat and slides his hands up to her hips again, gets off his knees and kisses her neck. “And I ain’t had dinner yet.”

 

“I still need a shower, though,” she says, cognizant of the sweat and grime from working in the hot gas station for eight hours that clings to her. “I’m not doing this smelling like a...a taquito.”

 

He grins like like a satisfied cat and nips at her bottom lip, but he pulls away enough that she can sling off the bra and step out of her underwear. She hears a sharp intake of breath and she’s just self conscious enough to think maybe he’s thinking twice about this, maybe the stretchmarks and c section scar is too much. But she should know better. He groans and draws her close again, snuggles his face between her breasts and squeezes her tight, his mouth opening to sigh against her chest.

 

“Goddamn,” he murmurs. “Fuckin’ gorgeous.”

 

A slender finger traces the line of her collarbone down to one dusky, pert nipple and he circles it, joins that finger with his tongue, makes her eyes slip shut and her mouth fall open. She’s so sensitive there she thinks she’d cum just like that, his head bowed and his arm around her waist as he sucks at her nipples, but he pulls back with a plop and moves to the other side, giving it the same attention. Beth arches her back into his touch and whispers his name, her fingers finding a bit of purchase in the softness of his short hair.

 

“I’m not going to make it to the damn bed if you don’t quit,” she huffs out.

 

“Whoever said I needed a bed?”

 

“I need a bed,” she says with a little bit of bite, and he smirks. “I’m old. And I need a shower. I stink.”

 

* * *

 

The water is hot, enough that it pinkens her skin, makes it prickle and tighten delightfully. The tiles of the shower are cool in comparison, her cheek pressed against it as Rio washes her slowly, methodically. He slides the soap and towel across her flesh as if he has nothing else in the world to do, his fingers just barely grazing the underside of her breasts, dipping down to her belly and the soft, barely there curls of her mound. He doesn’t press further, content just to touch her like this, to wash her slowly and let the water stream over the expanse of his broad, honey shoulders.

 

When she thinks she’ll fall asleep just from the heat of the water and the solidity of his chest against her back, he moves, pulls her away from the tiles and lets the shower soak her hair.

 

“I figured you’d use Pantene or some shit,” he says as he picks up her shampoo. It’s nearly out and she hasn’t thought about getting more just yet because she hasn’t had much time to wash her hair, much less go shampoo shopping. Suave works just fine for the kids; it’ll work alright for her. Of course, it doesn’t do nearly as well as the Humectress she used to swear by, but she doesn’t have 17 dollars to shell out for a bottle of shampoo, 20 thousand non withstanding 

 

“I used to get my shampoo at the salon,” she says with a bat of her eyes, her lashes brushing her cheeks as her eyes slip closed when he starts a gentle massage. A groan hangs in the middle of her throat and her lips part enough so that a little bit of it comes out, making Rio chuckle.

 

“Feels good?”

 

“You know it does,” she breathes out, not bothering to be ashamed at her reaction. She hasn’t had anyone wash her hair in what felt like ages. It’s been too long since she’s let anyone do anything with her hair, with all the cutting corners and scrimping she’s had to do. It’s little luxuries like that she misses. She thinks about how much money she’s got in the checking and if she could splurge on a cut and color next week or not. She’s apparently thinking too much because Rio stops shampooing her and when she opens her eyes, she sees him looking decidedly unimpressed.

 

“I mean, I can stop if you don’t like it.”

 

Beth sighs. “That’s not it.” She reaches up to sling suds from her hair and realizes her hair is already clean and rinsed. She really hadn’t been paying attention, had she?

 

“You don’t need to be thinking ‘bout nothing with me,” he says. It’s stern, in the same sort of way as when he’d told her not to think about using the botox and she can’t help it, it does something for her. Then again, just about everything about Rio does something for her. She smiles sheepishly and nods.

 

“Yes sir,” she responds, cheekily, and he grins again. And without another word, he turns the shower off, opens the doors and wraps her up in one of her fluffy white towels.

 

* * *

 

It’s cold in her room after the heat of her shower, but Rio’s behind her and his lips are on her neck. And she can’t hide anything now, not under the spray of water or the guise of getting clean. She can’t get distracted by anything, so she is forced to focus on the fact that she’s completely naked and so is he and that he’s built like Apollo and she isn’t. She thinks about how she hasn’t been completely nude in front of anyone in six years, or how until recently, she hadn’t lost the last few pounds of baby weight after Emma. Maybe skipping meals had leaned out her belly a bit and gotten rid of some of that back fat. Maybe not. She doesn't dwell on her body much anymore because there’s too much else to do. But she’s incredibly aware of it now, as Rio’s lips slide across her shoulders and move around to her collarbone and down to her chest.

 

At least she’s not that self conscious about that. Her tits are probably the best thing about her, besides her lips, maybe.

 

“You ever get it in your head to do anything to these, and we’re gonna have some problems.”

 

Beth snorts, though the pressure of his mouth quickly turns that into a moan. “I don’t have any...hmmm. I don’t have plans to. Maybe a lift in a few years, but-”

 

“Nuh uh,” he murmurs, grasping one breast in his palm and then sucking a nipple into his mouth. “ _Nothin’_.” Her mind goes blank then, and she forgets all about worrying how her body looks. And it’s for nothing, anyway, because Rio doesn’t seem to care about the stretch marks or the extra flesh that still clings to her hips or how her thighs jiggle a bit. He doesn’t seem to worry about anything except pulling the sharpest little sounds from her mouth. He takes his time sucking on her skin, little bites and nips across her ribs and down her torso, until he’s pushing her thighs open and spreading them wide, and he breathes warm air across her soaked pussy.

 

She feels half drunk but completely alive. She can’t even remember the last time anyone has done this, probably even before Danny had been born, and she’s almost angry at how neglected she’s been. Rio had just spent the better part of twenty minutes tasting every inch of her skin, his fingers doing double duty across the expanse of her. And it’s more than she’s ever gotten out of Dean Boland in 20 damn years. She deserves this. And she deserves to not worry about her shitty ex husband or his serious lack of sexual prowess when she’s got Rio between her legs. So she leans up on her elbows and watches his dark eyes as he turns his head and nips at her thigh.

 

He keeps his eyes on her the entire time it takes for him to tease her. It’s like he’s gauging her reactions to all the little touches and kisses he gives, as if he really wants to know what sets her off and makes her tick. Beth fights the urge to keep her mouth closed or hold back. There’s no reason she has to. The kids are gone and the house is empty and she can be as loud as she wants. Or, she can be as loud as she reasonably wants to be without alerting the neighbors, anyway. So when the drag of his fingernails along her skin makes her want to groan, she does. And when he dips his head down, grins up at her like he’s about to ravish her to kingdom come, and licks her from bottom to top, she cries out without really giving a shit about who hears her.

 

It wasn’t like she’d have been able to keep quiet anyway, not when he’s doing that with his tongue. She didn’t even know people could do shit like this with their mouths, little flickers and hard strokes and curlicues and what feels like the entire alphabet and a few numbers traced on her clit. His thumbs keep her lips parted and he sucks her into his warm, wet mouth whole, hums as he does so, sending vibrations through her body that make her rasp out his name.

 

And when he thinks she’s really into it, he eats her like he’s been starving, a little sloppy, a little messy. He closes his eyes and pushes her thighs up, though she fights him and wraps them around his neck out of sheer instinct. She wants to get closer, needs him to suck faster and harder, wants to cum but doesn’t want this to end. His teeth graze her labia just barely and she shudders, hard, her hands flying down to his head and grasping him a little roughly. And he laughs across her skin, sending shivers from the tip of her neck to the base of her spine. He pulls back with a soft plop and licks his lips, lifts his chin and slides a hand across her quivering belly.

 

“If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you were enjoying this.”

 

She wants to smack him, but instead, she squeezes her thighs closed fast and hard, enclosing his face and making him laugh, hot breath on her flesh.

 

“Are you going to run your mouth or use it?” she asks him, her fingers grasping for his head again. He keeps just out of reach and leans his cheek against her leg. The just barely there scruff of his incoming beard tickles, but it’s the fingertips that stroke the skin of her hips and waist that makes her wiggle. “Rio, come on. Be nice.”

 

He laughs hard at that, but he moves his mouth back over her core and ghosts his breath over her clit. She thinks she’ll have to arc her hips up and push him into her if he doesn’t stop stalling and teasing, but his tongue comes out once more and starts up his slow strokes again. It’s just fast enough, just hard enough to build momentum, but not enough to make her cum. It’s almost like dangling over the edge, unsure if or when she’d fall, and she both loves it and hates it, impatience scratching at the edges as her skin flushes and a light sweat breaks out across her body.

 

He pulls back once more, but this time to suck two long fingers into his mouth and slick them up, then slide them slowly inside her, making her body jerk from the bed and her hands scratch at his ears.

 

“Easy, Mama,” he purrs, but there’s no way she can be easy now, not when he’s pushing and thrusting those fingers (incredibly skilled, though of course they would be) inside her and his tongue rejoins the effort, and she’s rocking and moving with him, all inhibitions gone like mist. Even had there been anyone to hear her, she doesn’t think she’d care. Her mouth falls open, eyes slip shut, and she feels the stir of an orgasm thrumming through her, beginning from the middle and spreading out until it unravels and soaks every nerve and she winds up fast, hard, and snaps.

 

There’s a sound out of her chest that sounds like his name, but she can’t tell.

 

* * *

 

He lays his head on her tummy, giving her enough time to catch her breath. She thinks she may have blacked out for a split second, her eyes still fuzzy, her heartbeat throbbing in her ears. Her whole body feels warm and loose, like melted caramel. She wants to curl up and around Rio, to pull him close and nuzzle her nose into his neck and push his skin against hers, but he refuses to budge, at least until her breathing levels out a little more.

 

Instead, his fingers skim the scar low on her belly and he lifts his head a little to meet her eyes.

 

“You straight?”

 

She swallows and tilts her own head to glance at him better. “Hmm?” She lets her eyes wander along what she can see of her body and her hands come up to brush across her breasts, her nails catching on the stretch marks there and grazing her nipples, making her sigh. “You mean, birth control?” She shakes her head. She hasn’t been on anything since after Emma was born because she hadn’t really needed to be. She’d thought of going back and getting an iud but Dean hadn’t initiated anything in the months after childbirth and the years slipped past and she just hadn’t worried about it.

 

“Nope. You have anything?”

 

“Mmhm. In my pocket. Just double checkin’ though.”

 

He huffs a bit and rolls over, lifting himself from the bed so he can grab his discarded jeans and rifle through them. Beth takes that opportunity to skim the lines of his body. He’s lean, though cut like a diamond, and long everywhere. Long legs and long arms and long fingers and hands. He’s also unashamed entirely of his nudity, standing in the dim light that streams in from the half cracked door of the bathroom.

 

“Like what you see?”

 

She covers her grin in the pillow and hums. “Maybe.”

 

He chuckles a bit and pulls a condom from his pockets, waving the package back and forth between his fingers as he stalks back over to the bed. “Maybe? That’s all I get?”

 

Beth presses her lips together to keep from giggling like an idiot. Her eyes dart across his chest, to the handful of tattoos on his bicep and the single name across his collarbone. He dips into the bed on one knee and she reaches out to trace it, humming satisfied when he leans down and lets her.

 

“Lupe?”

 

“My mom.”

 

“Are you a mama’s boy?” she asks and he flops over and kisses her throat, distracting her just for a second.

 

“A little bit.”

 

He slips his free hand around her middle and works his mouth up from her throat to her chin, to her bottom lip and then kisses her soundly, slowly, until she forgets about his mother’s name and his tattoo is pressed against her mouth and her thighs slip up his sides.

 

It’s a slow climb back to to point where she’s hungry and aching for him, and she delights in every second of it. There’s something to be said for slow foreplay, the kind that pours out like molasses and drips across the bed, sweaty and sweet. The condom has fallen somewhere between her body and the bedsheets and by the time she’s ready for him (god she is, so ready, and yet she could just kiss him forever) Rio has to go hunting it, tickling her in the process, eliciting laughs from her that sound like they belong to someone else.

 

When had she ever been both this worked up and this relaxed? She can’t think of but one occasion, 19 and in college after a breakup with Dean when she’d bought weed off that kid that worked at the pizza place and she and Ruby had sparked up behind her mom’s house at two a.m. That’s what this feels like, being high, her blood rushing in her veins with maddening velocity, but her body feels laden, deliciously heavy and ripe and full to pluck from the tree.

 

Nimble fingers tear at the packaging and slip on the condom and then he kisses her again, and again and again until she can’t breathe. She wraps her arms around his shoulders just so steady herself, to find some sort of purchase because right now, she’s flying in the wind. He slips his fingers between them and across her clit and she arches into him, calls out his name.

 

“Rio…”

 

“You okay?”

 

She is. She nods and kisses him again for good measure. “I want this,” she tells him, flat out and honest and he pauses for only a moment, to get a good look into her eyes. “I do,” she adds, just in case he thinks she’s not sure. She’s never been so sure about anything in her life.

 

“A’ight.” He lifts himself with both hands and steadies above her, his hips within the cradle of her thighs. It takes but a second to line himself up with her and push forward and he watches her face the entire time, holds his breath as he does so. Beth refuses to close her eyes, but they roll back when he slides in slow and tight, when he’s as far as he can get and she’s full of him and she groans at every heartbeat, at every little movement because it’s been ages and he feels so good.

 

Good, but dangerous, as if he moved she’d split. She likes the feeling though. She likes how electric her skin feels as he pants above her, as he drags his lips across her breasts again and flicks the tip of her nipple with his tongue and squeezes her thigh as he lifts it and presses it close to her chest. She thinks she could lay like this and be just fine but then he starts to move, a full, deliberate thrust and she loses all train of thought.

 

* * *

 

Beth’s mind has always worked a million miles a minute.

 

It’s why, as a child, she’d had aspirations of owning her own business, of running a multi million dollar corporation with her name on the building. She could multitask like a pro and lie on the drop of a dime. And her mind never shut off, never quit working, always going over something even if it was as mundane as the grocery list or which clothes in the hamper needed to be pretreated from grass stains and mud spots.

 

She’d been thinking even during the births of her kids, pushing through the pain of labor and delivery and afterbirth by doing mathematical equations in her head or dreaming up elaborate house plans for when she and Dean inevitably moved out and built their own place in a nicer neighborhood. She had fantasies about her kitchen’s back splash, about what area rugs would look good in the large foyer she wanted, about what colors to paint the girls’ rooms and how to convince her husband to add a balcony on to their master bedroom. She’d thought about which bills needed to be paid and how much dog food they had left and whether or not she wanted to risk black Friday with three young ones sometimes while Dean was on top of her, giving it his best, every so often coaxing something out of her more than a wistful sigh and a pat on his shoulder.

 

But for the first time in probably forever, she doesn’t think about anything.

 

It was impossible to shut her mind completely off most of the time, but the second Rio really began to move-impossibly deep and so good, god so good-she had nary a thought in her head. The one constant thing that passed through her pleasure shocked mind was _more_ , variations of his name, and pleas for _harder_ and a little _faster_. Of course he ignored her. Of course he took his sweet time working her body like an instrument, his mouth relentless on her neck and breasts, his hands dragging down her pale flesh. There wasn’t much to do but feel, whimper and gasp and groan as he shifted and moved inside her over and over.

 

_Fuck._

 

Beth bows her head and holds on, pushing her heels into the mattress and up to meet him. He seems to have only one focus and that’s getting her off. She does whatever he wants her to, obeying his half choked command to move with him, to arch her back and take more of him.

 

 _More, more, more_ , and god, it was so hot and so needy how much she begs, anything to make sure he doesn’t stop because she needs this, so bad, _please don’t stop_.

 

_Ain’t no stoppin’....goddamn. Fuck...fuck yes. Think you can cum for me, Mama?_

 

She can’t think anything, and she whines, wishing she could articulate that to him but nothing comes out. Instead it’s a moan, a drag of _yes_ , because she probably can cum right now. He pulls her up, pausing only long enough to drag her into his lap and the change in position makes the blood that’s shot to her head shift until she’s dizzy and drunk, hanging onto his shoulders and he pushes up and moves again.

 

It’s a different kind of deep now, the kind she wasn’t even aware was possible and it makes her sob. Her eyes slip shut in bliss and her mouth blindly searches for his, finding it warm and wet and willing, his tongue diving in to taste hers, his teeth biting down on her soft bottom lip. All the fuzz filters out her head when she hears him grunt like that and call her Elizabeth, all soft and deep. He grasps the back of her head and digs his fingers into her hair and pulls, just hard enough that it sends a shock through her body because she likes that, craves it after the first time he does it and she moves harder against him, faster.

 

So close. So fucking close, just...fuck... _right_ _there_ , _Rio_ , _please_ …

 

He leans back a little and changes the angle again, but for the better so that the pleasure she’s been so starved of creeps up her spine and across her shoulders and through her fingers, static shock and little waves, and she opens her mouth in a gasp because oh fuck yes there it is, but no words come out. There’s a sharp, incredibly raw cry and she shakes as she cums, her eyes blinking back tears or sweat, she isn’t sure, but everything feels good, everything feels hot and starry and thick like saltwater. There are hands on her body and a mouth at her neck and he still moves, harder this time, but she’s only just aware as he cums too, teeth barred and eyes screwed shut.

 

He presses his forehead to her shoulder and she leans back and takes him with her, sinking into the pillows as sight and sound and cognition comes seeping back into her consciousness.

 

He’s heavy. But it’s a good heavy. She listens to him breathe, takes in one breath after the other.

 

One, then two, then three. _Good_.

* * *

 

He fucks her twice more before she falls asleep tangled in her sweat soaked sheets, his fingers resting on her hip and his mouth nibbling the side her neck.

 

He isn’t there when she wakes in the morning. She doesn’t think she actually expected him to be, so she doesn’t take offense. He’s probably got business to do on a Sunday morning, same as she does, and the kids will be back around noon and she’s still got two dozen cupcakes to finish before 10:30.

 

Sunlight beams behind her still shuttered blinds when she crawls from the bed, sore and sated. She takes a moment to crack them just a little, enough so that the light hits her eyes and makes her squint. It’s a gorgeous morning, though the window is still cold and the last vestiges of winter cling to the trees. It’ll be spring soon enough, and Beth thinks perhaps that’s the perfect time for new beginnings.

 

She takes a shower, mindful of her body and every curve, every inch of her skin. There’s bite marks and love marks and hickeys all along her chest and across her ribs and some, she’s sure, on and between her thighs. She slides soap slick hands across her belly, across the scar he’d kissed and the stretchmarks he’d drug his tongue on. She feels like she’s glowing from the inside out, and she hums as she washes, the weight of everything that has gone wrong in her life momentarily lifted.

 

Two loads go on to wash and dry as she makes the cupcakes-two dozen chocolate with pink frosting and pearl sprinkles. There’s a song playing in her head as she works, the time slipping by like gossamer and silk, the light shifting in her too warm kitchen. Beth hears the sound of tire on gravel outside, the bark of the dog, and then the giggles of her babies and she smiles.

 

Late that night, as the kids sleep and the world winds down, Beth sits in bed with a leather bound notebook she’d bought on clearance at Hobby Lobby almost five years ago and writes. There’s a lull in her thoughts, a moment where she catches her breath after a solid hour of scripting and planning and wishing and wanting. _Believe that you deserve this,_  she thinks, double checking her list and reorganizing it in order of deal breakers and compromises. And as she taps her pen against the lined paper, she gets a text message. Another unknown number, but at this point she doesn’t need to worry about deciphering who sent what. She already knows.

 

_When are you off?_

 

There’s a creeping blush spreading across her chest and she’s happy nobody can see her right now. She’s grinning like an idiot.

 

_Wednesday._

 

_Cool. Be over bout 10?_

 

Beth thinks of a million things to say in response, something witty or catchy or flirty even, but can’t come up with anything half as good as a simple ‘okay’ and a smiley face. She plugs her phone into the charger and closes her journal and sinks into the bed, the smell of Rio still on her pillow to lull her to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m on tumblr, if you’d like to say hi. lilithenaltum.tumblr.com


	2. amigos

This is how it goes for a while.

 

He comes over, mostly at night, sometimes in the middle of the day after her shift at the hotel, and he kisses her slow and hard and long, hikes her skirt up and bends her over the breakfast table (the way he had in her fantasies, over the dishes, blueberry pancakes). Sometimes he pins her to the wall of the laundry room or pushes her up against the washer, makes her cum just as the spin cycle stops. He always leaves before the kids come home, careful not to give them the wrong impression, careful that they don’t think he’s doing anything he isn’t supposed to.

 

He isn't, but that depends on who was asked.

 

When he finally does decide to make his presence known, on a Tuesday she’s got off, Kenny is fighting with his math homework again and she’s at her wits end on what to do about it. There’s a little niggling in the back of her mind that tells her to text him, to call him and ask for another favor (another and another and another), one more thing he could make her pay back with her mouth and her hands and her body. It’s not like she really minds. If this is prostitution, she’s thoroughly enjoying the work.

 

They’ve gone over the same problem ten times so she finally does text him. And she should know he’s somewhere nearby, because he shows up only ten minutes after, that all knowing smirk on his face. The kids take to him quickly; fascinated with his easy going nature and his tattoo, or the simple fact that he’s different and new and he talks to them like they’re people and not children. She tries to act like he’s just a friend, that he’s nothing more than someone she’s acquaintances with, though it’s hard when all she wants to do is drag him into the kitchen and drop his pants and suck him off beside her dishwasher.

 

But she’s got restraint. She knows how to use it.

 

“Mom!” Kenny’s face is glowing and he looks happier than she’d seen him in ages. “Mom, Rio figured it out! It’s so easy, why couldn’t you get that one?”

 

Beth is almost annoyed enough to roll her eyes but she just swats her son playfully on the head and tells him to run upstairs to wash up for the night. “Make sure your brother and sisters are in bed, too. I told them to go in an hour ago.”

 

Kenny kisses her cheek and fist bumps Rio and takes off without question, the easiest she’s gotten him to go to bed since she and Dean split. If all it takes is having Rio around to get her kids to behave, she’d have him around all the time.

 

Truthfully, she’d have him around all the time anyway.

 

“How much do I owe you?” she asks, almost joking but really not. Life is a series of exchanges, she’s learned. He’s helped her again with something completely unrelated to money but he’ll want something for it. She doesn’t mind. Really, she doesn’t. So long as he’s sure Kenny’s asleep, she’ll do whatever he wants.

 

But he surprises her with the expression on his face. It’s a gorgeous face, she thinks, not for the first time. She has memorized the way his deceptively soft skin stretches across his bone structure, the likes of which she’s never seen on anyone. She thinks about him naked, his slender, but strong frame and how every muscle and every line of his body was exquisitely made. And she thinks that he could model if he ever tired of the life he led, but she doesn’t voice that aloud. It sounds silly. She doesn’t want him to think her silly, though she knows he probably does anyway.

 

“Why you always gotta assume you owe me shit?”

 

She blinks at him dumbly and shrugs. “Because that’s how life works?” She hates that it comes across as a question. She wishes she sounded more certain about everything. “I mean, I owe you for the money. I assume I owe you for helping my son.”

 

He frowns and shakes his head. “I’d do that for free. Math is easy for me.”

 

“Oh.”

 

“Yeah, _oh_. Stop making assumptions. They’ll get you in trouble.”

 

Beth lets him slip past her to the refrigerator, and he pulls out a Capri Sun, taps the straw against the counter until the paper slides up and punches it into the pouch. He takes a long sip of the drink as she watches, his eyes like warm espresso as he regards her.

 

“No really, why do you think I’m comin’ over here?”

 

She doesn’t want to tell him what she really thinks because now she thinks he’ll get angry with her. She’s had him angry with her before; she knows she can handle it. But why should she when he’s been nothing but sweet the last few weeks?

 

“It’s nothing, Rio. Don’t worry about it.” She moves to close her fridge, the one he still stands beside, but he catches her hand and stops her short. “You’re running up the power bill,” she grumbles, refusing to look him in his eyes for fear she’ll lose her good sense and do something really stupid. Something absolutely ridiculous, like confess that she wanted more than a roll in the hay in the middle of the school day when she got off work.

 

“Tell me,” he says quietly, in the voice he uses when he really wants her to listen, to think, to pay attention. She keeps her mouth closed for as long as she can stand it but his gaze is penetrating and it makes her feel naked and raw.

 

So she sighs and moves back a bit, though his hand never leaves hers.

 

“I thought,” she begins, almost laughing because it sounds pathetic when she puts it into words. “I thought you wanted...you know.”

 

“Nah. I don’t know. Tell me.”

 

God, she hates that he does this. He wants everything bare and open and explained but he can dance around whatever she asks because he doesn’t have to be honest with her about anything. He makes her tell all her truth and pour out her soul to him but she can’t get him to budge on anything. It makes her feel helpless and angry and she darts her eyes to his, glares at him.

 

“I figured you were fucking the ten grand out of me,” she says bluntly, a little pleased at how surprised his face is, but regretting it when he looks hurt.

 

He has the audacity to look hurt. It’s almost amusing except that it’s not.

 

“So...you figured that you could pay me back by slinging me some pussy every now and then?”

 

And he scoffs, moves away from the fridge and takes a long swig of his Capri Sun. She thinks he’ll laugh at her now, storm out her house and never talk to her again. She’d deserve it. She hadn’t asked him anything specific about repaying her debt, but she’d done a lot of assuming. And part of those assumptions had been encouraged by him anyway. It’s not like he’d made a move to correct her when she’d hinted at it that first night. She’s more exasperated by this now than she’s worried about him being upset about whatever she assumed. So she doesn’t miss that he sighs as if she’s the problem and not him, and shakes his head.

 

“You really don’t know shit about me, do you?” he asks, and she can’t help but bark out a laugh.

 

“How the hell do you expect me to know anything about you?” she asks, absolutely incredulous. “You never tell me anything!”

 

“You never ask,” he says, almost too casually, and she realizes she’d done more assuming. She’d assumed he didn’t want her asking him anything personal so she never did. She barely talked to him about himself at all.

 

“I...well. No. But I didn’t think-”

 

“You haven’t been doing much of that,” he quips and it would hurt if she wasn’t still caught up in the fact that all she’d had to do was ask and maybe get a response out of him. “You're too smart not to be thinking, Mama.”

 

“Yeah, well.”

 

“Ask me something,” he tells her, moving from the fridge to the bar and hopping up on the counter. His legs swing back and forth like a kid’s and she’s reminded that he’s younger she is, though she has no idea by how much. And he looks so young right then. It makes her feel like a dirty old woman.

 

“Like what?” she asks him, leaning against the fridge.

 

He shrugs. “Whatever you want. I may or may not answer. But you can ask it. You got ten minutes.”

 

Beth opens her mouth, but all thought leaves her brain as she struggles for a question a little more complex than how old he was or what his last name was. Because she realizes she doesn’t know either. She’s been sleeping with a man and doesn’t know his name or his age and she doesn’t know how she got to this point, but it is what it is.

 

“When’s your birthday?”

 

His grin is slow, soft.

 

“March 20,” he says, and she nods. Figures he wouldn’t give her a year.

 

“Do you ...have any siblings? Parents? Family?”

 

“Do you?”

 

Beth rolls her eyes. “Rio, you said I could ask you anything I wanted!”

 

“And I said I might answer and I might not.” He tilts his head and looks at her curiously. “Why’d you wanna know all that boring shit anyway? Is the dick _that_ good?”

 

She almost chokes on her own spit. “Uh, yeah? Yes. Yes, it’s very...that’s not why-”

 

“Okay, so...why do you care so much about my birthday? About my folks?”

 

She blows out a long, slow breath through her mouth and stares at him as if he were stupid. “Because!”

 

“Because why?”

 

“Who’s asking whom the questions?” she shoots back and he laughs. And it’s worth it to be that worked up and irritable because his laugh is gorgeous and he’s even more beautiful when he does. She thinks it’s a bit of an even trade. And then she mentally slaps herself for thinking of everything in terms of trades and exchanges and payments. When had she started doing that so much?

 

“Alright, fine. But one more question from me. You gotta answer honestly or I’m not answering shit from you the rest of the night.”

 

That sounds fair.

 

“Fine.”

 

“Why do you think I’m fuckin’ you?”

 

That catches her a bit off guard and she doesn’t know how to answer it except to tell him what she’d said before. “Because I owe you money.”

“You don’t owe me shit.” He slides off the island and stalks to where she’s leaned against the fridge still. “I told you to tell me sorry and you did. You gave me a kiss and that cleared out the other ten g's.”

 

“So...you’re...sleeping with me because…”

 

“I want to.” He shakes his head as if it’s obvious. “If you weren’t assuming shit so hard you’d pick up on that. You really think I solicit pussy for profits?” He chortles and makes a face. “I don’t pay for that shit.”

 

“Oh.”

 

“I mean, yours is good.” He dips his head, lowers his voice so that she can feel him speak all the way through her body. “It’s real good, Elizabeth. Amazin’.”

 

“Thank you,” she whispers, because what else do you say to something like that?

 

“I just thought this was a mutual thing. You know, you get broke off, I get broke off. We like being around each other, yeah?”

 

She nods cause she does like being around him, even when he’s just sitting at the island while she makes cupcakes. Sometimes it’s not even about the sex, and she hadn’t realized that till just now. And it dawns on her that this is his way of making her see that he’s not in this for a debt. He’s in this for his own personal pleasure. When the realization hits her, he sees it because his smile is slow and almost annoying in it’s knowing.

 

“Can you blame me for being skeptical?” she asks him, when he pushes back and grabs his Capri Sun again. “I don’t guess I’m usually your type.”

 

“You don’t know what my type is,” he says, a little offended. “You ain’t ever asked.”

 

She almost comments that she’s always been too scared to ask him anything but that’s what the theme of tonight's little fete a fete is so she doesn’t. Instead, she watches him for a moment and pushes off the fridge, opening it to snag her own juice pouch, and decides she’ll up her ante.

 

“How many kids do you have?”

 

He pauses for a moment before he says anything, as if he hadn’t expected a question like that.

 

“None.”

 

“That you know of?”

 

“Nope. None. I’m careful.”

 

“Good. Where were you born?”

 

“Is any of this part of the reason you don’t ever ask me shit?”

 

Beth smiles. “Maybe. Are you going to tell me?”

 

He chuckles. “Born in Chicago. Mami moved us to Detroit when I was three. I do have siblings, four. I’m the oldest.”

 

“And your mom?” Lupe. She knew his mother's name was Lupe.

 

“Lives in a big ass house across town with two cats and my baby sisters. They’re twins. They’re seventeen.”

 

“I uh…” She wonders for a split second what Rio is like as a big brother and then catches up to what he's saying.

 

“My two younger brothers have their own construction business. I had them build Mami her house."

 

"That's incredibly sweet of you," she says with a smile. He returns it and shrugs.

 

"I told you I was a mama's boy." He pauses for a moment, as if to think of more he can tell her. Beth figures it won't be anything too intimate, but that's fine. She's enjoying what he's giving her now. "I’m a Pisces. I like long walks in the park. Rocky road ice cream. I watch HGTV, but don’t tell nobody.”

 

She can’t help the laugh that bubbles up in her throat. It’s entirely possible he’s bullshitting her but she loves that he’s humoring her.

 

“Explains why you know so much about my kitchen’s back splash.”

 

He shakes his head, though the memory of their first little run in made him smirk. “Nah. I worked at Home Depot when I was a kid. You know, I coulda been a carpenter, too, if I wanted. Would have joined my brothers in the business.”

 

“Why didn’t you?” She likes the idea of straight laced domestic Rio fixing homes and building them, making things with his hands. It makes her cheeks burn.

 

“Cause I’m not cut out for all that.”

 

He moves away from the island and to the sink, looks out the kitchen window and is quiet for a few minutes as she sips her Capri Sun. The things have way too much sugar in them, she realizes, and she mentally makes a note to look for options a little less diabetic coma inducing. And then he turns his head to catch her attention and his voice is quiet.

 

“You ever been to Miami?”

 

Beth shakes her head. “No, I...no, why?”

 

He looks back out the window then and she thinks he’ll not answer her again but he hums, apparently deciding in his head.

 

“Wanna go?”

 

* * *

 

She asks the hotel for a week off and since they’re over staffed and cutting hours they give her the go ahead. She schedules it for the kids’ spring break, since she’d already promised them they could go to their dad’s house. In the meantime, her little arrangement with Rio progresses. There’s still sex, of course, good sex, the kind that makes her toes curl and her body ache from withdrawals days afterward. But sometimes he just likes to come by and help her son with his math homework or teach Emma how to tie her shoes or play video games with Jane or watch _The Flash_ with Danny. Sometimes, he’ll bring them all dinner-pizza and wings or burgers and fries-and plop down on their couch, the six of them squished in, Emma in her lap and Danny falling asleep on his shoulder and they’ll watch a kid’s movie.

 

Most of the time, it’s just The Incredibles and the sequel over and over, but when the kids are asleep and they’ve carried them upstairs, he tells her to put in Aladdin and he mouths the lyrics to the songs and makes her laugh, kisses her silly, and makes love to her right on the couch.

 

There’s the thrill of getting caught, though nobody ever comes down the stairs past ten pm. Even so, she cranes her head around while he’s on his knees, mouth on her thighs, and listens for little footsteps just in case.

 

It becomes a nice little routine and she doesn’t really think about the consequences of sorta kinda seeing an actual criminal because neither of them ever bring it up. In her head, she knows she’s pretending he’s just a cute younger guy interested in spending his time with her. In reality, she’s aware that he’s possibly just keeping tabs on her for whatever reason. Or maybe it’s a combination of both things; he’s got to make sure she doesn’t snitch what she knows and he likes that she sucks his dick without issue. It’s a win win. Or, it would be if her sister and her best friend were still in the dark about it.

 

Ruby only finds out because Emma, at five, can’t keep her mouth shut. It’s a fairly innocent thing, she knows, but she can’t help but sigh when her daughter lets the cat out the bag. Annie’s in the kitchen making pizza rolls with Danny, Sara and Jane while Kenny and Sadie play games on her cellphone. Emma was supposed to be playing with Harry but apparently the two of them got tired of tea parties with stuffed animals because they ran through the house as if Beth had never told her children not to.

 

“Emma! No running, baby, slow down!”

 

Ruby catches her son and shoots him a look. “You know good and well not to go running through Auntie Beth’s house. You don’t do that at home, do you?”

 

“No ma’am,” he says softly, looking mostly apologetic, but a giggle lurks behind his passive expression. Beth can’t help but smile. “I’m sorry.”

 

“Okay, don’t tell me, tell Beth.”

 

“I’m sorry Auntie Beth.”

 

Beth sighs and shakes her head, ruffling his hair and sends them back to the den. And then Emma stops mid stride and turns around.

 

“Mommy?”

 

“Yes baby?”

 

“Is Rio coming over with dinner tonight? I’m hungry.”

 

Beth opens her mouth but nothing comes out. Ruby’s expression is priceless though, and sometime between the time it takes her to come up with something to say and for her daughter to run off, satisfied with the answer, her friend has glared a hole the size of Michigan into her face.

 

“Is _who_ going to do _what_?!”

 

“Ruby, listen-”

 

“Annie! Get in here!”

 

“Oh god,” she groans, her head falling back against the couch. Now this was going to get blown way out of proportion. And she’d had a few months of nothing but quiet and good sex and pizza with...well, what was he?

 

Oh. Her _friend_. She almost laughs at the thought of that.

 

“What?! I swear the house isn’t on fire, we just...turned the oven up a little too high. Pizza rolls are almost done by the way, and I went ahead and threw that peach cobbler you’ve had sitting in the freezer in too, because it’s just gonna freezer burn and-” Annie pauses when Ruby continues glaring at Beth who just blinks up at the ceiling because she can’t believe this is where her life has taken her.

 

Good old Beth Marks, divorced at 40 with four kids and secretly sleeping with a gangster probably ten years her junior. At _least_ ten years, she guesses, but she has no idea because he’d expertly avoided answering her question about that.

 

_Why does it matter how old I am, huh? I’m legal, that’s all you need to know._

 

 _Nothing about you is legal, Rio_ , and he’d started a slow laugh at that, kissed her soundly. She’d been proud of how she’d made him smile, of how his eyes had lit up when she thumped his nose playfully and kissed him back.

 

“Hellooooo, earth to the wonder twins? I swear, sometimes I wonder if you guys are related and I’m the odd one out.”

 

“You gonna tell her what Emma asked you or do I need to?”

 

“Are you going to lecture me about my choices in life again, or do I need to remind you that I’m a grown woman?”

 

Ruby’s brow shot up and she sat back in the couch a little stunned. “Excuse me, then, I’m just trying to figure out why in the world you’re letting your kids hang around a gang member!”

 

“I’m not letting them...that’s not what this is.” Oh no, it was deeper than that.

 

“Wait a minute.” Annie interjects, her brows furrowed in disbelief. “You mean to tell me you’re still in touch with gang friend? Didn’t he insult you and tell you to fuck off?”

 

Beth shrugs, debating on whether she should mention the text or the fact that he’d helped her with all her bills and most of her mortgage for the year or not. She decides to keep both of those under wraps unless they pry it out of her, and she’s a pretty good liar. She figures she won’t have to get in that deep.

 

“He apologized,” she finally says, offering both ladies a terse smile. “And, he maybe sorta said we could be friends. You know, since I’m no longer under his command and isn’t on his payroll.”

 

“Uh huh.”

 

“And look, he helps Kenny with his homework occasionally and sometimes brings over pizza.” She shrugs again as if there’s nothing to it.“ That’s it. He’s not so bad when he’s not threatening you for money.”

 

Ruby is silent, incredibly perceptive, almost more than Beth herself and it makes her skin itch. She feels like she’s under a microscope and that they’re going to see every kiss and bite mark and hickey he’s ever put on her flesh. Maybe they will. In that case, she’ll own up to it and wear every mark like a trophy because she’s not ashamed of them.

 

She’s not ashamed of him. She’s not. She just wants him all to herself for as long as she can have him, for as long as he’ll have her, until he’s tired of her and wants something prettier and thinner and younger. She’ll ride the wave for as long as it keeps going.

 

“Okay. Cool. But what does he get out of it?” Annie asks, and Beth wants to smack her head into the couch over and over until they both leave her alone. “There’s no way he’s playing nice without something in return. What’s he got you doing? Moving drugs this time? Is he playing FedEx with your butthole?”

 

Ruby makes a face and Beth stifles a groan but she shakes her head.

 

“He’s not making me do anything, Annie. He just...sometimes I make extra cupcakes and he’ll take them with him. I think he just wants a friend, is all. You know? Like, I know what he does but I’m not judgmental or anything.”

 

“He held a gun to your head.”

 

“His boy held a gun to my head. He um...he pointed it at my neck. That’s a little-”

 

“Look,” Annie breaks in again, getting glares from both Ruby and Beth. “The point is, he’s dangerous. You have four young kids, and you should really start dating again instead of making treats for your friendly neighborhood gangster.”

 

Beth purses her lips together and frowns. “What if maybe he’s watching out for me, huh? What if that’s why I’m actually able to keep this damn house and get Dean to fucking let up with the goddamn custody case? Huh?”

 

She regrets it the second she says it, aware of Annie’s own custody troubles and how she’d lost that fight. Not that Gregg minds if she sees Sadie as much as she wants. It’s just the principle of the matter. It’s just the idea that she’d fought so hard to keep her and couldn’t. And Beth wishes she could take it back, but she can’t.

 

“Yeah, we all would be so lucky to have a fucking criminal intimidate the right people so we could keep our kids.”

 

She moves away from the couch and then back into the kitchen without another word and Beth sighs.

 

“To be fair, she took that the wrong way,” Ruby offers but Beth shakes her head.

 

“Yeah, but...I know better.”

 

“About Rio? Or about accidentally pushing a sore spot? She pushes yours all the time, Beth. She’ll be alright.” Ruby shifts in the couch and the silence that stretches between them is surprisingly uncomfortable. She doesn’t know what to say to fill it so she says nothing. And then Ruby leaves her alone and heads into the kitchen, something about burning cobbler and Annie’s feelings.

 

It gives her time to really wonder if her sister and her friend are right or not. More than likely, they are. But she doesn’t want them to be.

 

She doesn’t want him to be dangerous and bad for her (he is).

 

She doesn’t want him to be a threat to her safety and normality (he is).

 

She wants him to just be hers (he wasn’t...was he?).

 

And when she flops back into her bed that night, kids lain out on the floor of the den, Annie in the boys’ room and Ruby in the girls’ room, she thinks about an alternate universe where she doesn’t have to pretend that she wants him to be anything he’s not.

 

She doesn’t.

 

* * *

 

Weeks come and go. Annie apologizes for overreacting, and Beth apologizes for not being tactful. There’s more play dates and sleepovers with the three of them and the kids, Stan and Ruby mostly just coexisting underneath the same roof at the moment. Beth wishes she’d never gotten them into this mess, wishes her best friend wasn’t suffering the loss of trust in her marriage. Good intentions, she knows, but the road to hell were paved with them. So she stops apologizing for that and makes the best of what they’ve got and every so often she sends out a wish into the universe that Stan will get his head out his ass and forgive Ruby her one transgression. There was power in that, she felt. She’d written down so many things and let them out into the ether and somehow, they’d manifested into something great.

 

But in the meantime, Rio hangs back as if he somehow knows there’s tension between the women, as if he’s picked up without asking that she’s second guessing having him around so much. The kids miss him; Kenny most of all because he’s most of the reason that her son passes his math classes. Emma tears up and throws fits when he isn’t around to tell her a bedtime story and Danny asks if Mom’s friend will be back for more movie nights. Jane is the only one who seems to understand that maybe friendships wane and wax like this, though Beth herself isn’t sure if she’s done anything.

 

He hasn’t said anything.

 

Instead, he comes by the day she packs the kids up to go to their father’s. Dean insists he’ll meet her at the park instead of coming by the house, something about his new girlfriend not wanting him to visit his ex without her supervision. Beth finds the whole thing absolutely hilarious, borderline pathetic, that he’s dating a girl who wants to run his life when she’s barely out of college. But she keeps her thoughts on that to herself and gathers her babies their clothes for the week, makes sure Buddy has his bath so he won’t stink up Dean’s new SUV, packs them all a few extra snacks and tasks Kenny with getting them all their vitamins because he knows Dean won’t remember.

 

She meets her ex husband at the park and kisses her kids goodbye, even kisses the dog on top his furry head and watches them pack excitedly into his car, tries not to glare at the slender blonde sitting in the passenger seat looking like the trophy she is. She tries not to let Dean know she disapproves or even cares, because he doesn’t need to know that.

 

“I’ll be sure to take care of them, Bethy,” he tells her and all she offers him is a curt smile.

 

“I’m sure. Have a good week.” She turns on her heel and slips into her van, watches them pull out the parking lot and she takes a moment to catch her breath, to let the weight of everything fall down on her and to cry. She hasn’t cried in ages. She hasn’t had the time.

 

It’s so quiet when she gets home that it’s unnerving so she cuts on the television and pops a bowl of popcorn, digs her uniform for work out of the drier and goes back and forth in her head about reneging on her vacation. It’s not like she has anywhere to go or money to go anywhere with if he doesn’t want to take her to Miami like he’d said he would. And it's looking like he’s not going to worry about it now. She figures he’s found something or someone else worth his time.

 

When the backdoor of her house opens and shuts, she can’t help but smile, though she wishes she could be a lot more blase about this. At the very least, she’d like him to think she isn’t impressed with his radio silence for so long. But when he rounds the corner of the couch and slides into it like he owns the place, she can’t do a thing but hold out the bowl of popcorn and offer him some. And he takes a handful, silently, sits back with her and watches the newest episode of Dancing with the Stars.

 

“So you’re not gonna ask where I was?”

 

She shakes her head, stuffs more popcorn in her mouth, and pretends like she doesn’t want to know. She does. But he’s too used to her caring way too much and she needs him to know that she’s not a stupid, silly little girl to be played with.

 

“What’s gotten into you, huh? You usually always ask me a million questions when you see me.”

 

“Mmm. Usually.”

 

They’re quiet for a while, until he grunts and gets off the couch and heads back to the bathroom. She takes the opportunity to dump the kernels still in the bottom of the bowl in the trash and grab two bottles of water, one for her, one for him. It’s little things like that, subtle little gestures. He has to know he means something to her. But whether he’ll ever acknowledge it, she isn’t sure.

 

“Kids gone?” he asks, though he obviously knows they are.

 

“I dropped them off at the park about an hour before you got here.”

 

He nods, hums. “Was sorta hoping I could say bye, you know? Haven’t gotten a chance to hang out or anything.”

 

“I hadn’t noticed.” If it comes out a little bitter, who cares? Friends were supposed to keep in touch, she thought. Friends didn’t disappear for weeks at a time.

 

“Which is why you’re giving me the third degree right now, huh?”

 

She turns her head slowly to look at him, expecting a smirk or some sly slick little expression but instead, he looks oddly genuine. He sighs and reaches out a hand to her and she’ll be damned if she doesn’t take it, reveling in the warmth of his skin across her palm. It’s been too long since he’s touched her and she misses it so much.

 

“I had...some shit to take care of.”

 

“I figured. I’m not mad.”

 

“You lyin’, Mama.” He leans in close and tugs her over until she’s practically in his lap, her water thankfully still closed tight. “Don’t lie to me, alright?” Beth nods and keeps her mouth closed lest she say something smart-alecky about him lying to her all the time.

 

But he’s never lied to her, ever. He’s only ever not told her everything she’s asked him. There was a difference.

 

  
“So look. Flight leaves tomorrow at noon. I guess you’re already packed, huh?”

 

Beth frowns and shakes her head. “I didn’t think we were even going anywhere anymore,” she says, wishing she had the strength to tell him she didn’t even want to go, but she really did. And there her traitorous heart went, thumping like a fool because he’d shown up again and he was taking her to Miami still and she wouldn’t have to cancel her vacation and go to work next week. “You hadn’t said anything.”

 

“I said I’d take you to Miami,” he counters. “I didn’t tell you I was cancellin’.”

 

She snorts softly and pulls away from him, but he holds her still. “You didn’t say anything, actually.” And there it was, the anger she felt for being in the dark for most of that month. She can feel him exhale through his nose as he tries so hard not to chuckle at her expense.

 

“I told you, I had business.”

 

“A simple text saying so would have been fine,” she says, her voice rising a bit. She fights to keep as calm and unaffected as she thinks she should be but god, it’s so hard. “It’s not as if I care where you go or what you do.”

 

He regards her for a moment and hooks his forefinger under her chin, turns her head so that she looks at him, eye to eye. It’s enough to heat her from the inside out, the intensity of his gaze, the depths of his dark eyes. He has to know what kind of effect he has on her, has to know that she drowns in the deep dark of him.

 

“Yeah, you do,” he says, simple as that. And she knows he can read her like a book while his pages are glued shut. It’s not fair. But not much in life was fair. “But maybe I could’ve said something,” and she knows that’s his apology. “I guess a text wouldn’t have hurt.”

 

“No. It wouldn’t have.”

 

“Cause we’re friends, right?”

 

He says in that way where he wants her to really think about her answer, to tell him something different.

 

“We’re whatever you want us to be,” she says quietly, because it’s the truth, as sad as it sounds out in the open. He doesn’t react at first, just watches her, until her eyes burn from not blinking and he lets her chin  go.

 

“Don’t worry about packing anything,” he tells her, turning his head back to the TV, the last of the commercials ending and the show coming back on. Someone’s getting voted off tonight. She doesn’t really care who it is, she only cares that Rio hasn’t let her go and she’s still mostly cradled in his lap, spread across his long legs like she belongs there. His words only filter into her brain when she stops focusing on the warmth of his body pressed against her at this angle.

 

“Why?”

 

“You’ll find out when you get there.” He says nothing else, and so Beth opens her water and leans her head on his chest, and watches the rest of Dancing With the Stars in the dark of her living room.

 

* * *

 

The trip to Miami is where she finds out two things she’s wondered about since she met him: his last name, and his age.

 

The first, she finds out when they dip out of her driveway and head off toward the airport, a private plane waiting to take them to Florida. She didn’t imagine he’d fly commercial for some reason, probably less risk involved if he can just up and take off without the need to pass through security and TSA. Even so, she’s impressed he wanted to rent a private plane just to take her to Miami. She’d have been fine on American in coach.

 

When she sinks into the plush seats of the plane and peels off her shades, looks out the small windows at the tarmac and waits on takeoff, she listens. He talks in low, rapid Spanish to the pilot, a man about her mother’s age who smiles at them both and shakes Rio’s hand and calls him Señor Javarez.

 

And maybe it’s a fake name, she thinks, but it’s something to go by. She’s got something at least, even if it’s not the name he was born with, even if it’s a cover. _Rio Javarez_ , she repeats in her head, over and over until the name blurs in her brain and melds into her skin and she mouths it the way she thinks she heard the pilot say it.

 

“You know that’s spelled with a J, right?” he asks her as he slips into the seat beside her. She tries not to let the surprise spread across her face, but it does because he laughs. It’s not mocking, just something light and amused and it’s so beautiful she can’t help but laugh back.

 

“I uh...I think I remember that from Spanish class,” she comments. “But it’s been years, so…”

 

“J-a-v-a-r-e-z. In case you need to write that down or somethin’.”

 

Beth snorts. “Why would I need to write that down?”

 

Rio shrugs. _Señor_ _Javarez_ , she thinks a little grin curling around her lips. She wonders if Rio is short for anything, and almost asks, but decided against it at the last second. It doesn’t matter, she thinks. She likes Rio just fine.

 

“Hell, I don’t know. Maybe you wanna put my name with yours and see how it sounds. You know, Rio and Elizabeth carved into the tree.”

 

She wishes she didn’t blush so easy. “I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.” But she can’t keep the laughter out her voice and he can’t stop laughing so she doesn’t mind if she’s a little embarrassed. Because part of her had thought of something so childish, had glanced at the big oak in the backyard and thought of going out there at night and carving in an R and a B. That was probably the stupidest thing she’d thought of, honestly, and thank god she hadn’t actually gone ahead and done it. He’d never let her live it down if she did.

 

“I don’t carve names into trees just because the dick is good,” she continues, earning a raised brow and a chuckle. “Not that I remember. I hadn’t had any in a very long time.”

 

Rio rolls his eyes, and she feels the plane begin to move. “Ain’t been that long.”

 

“Three weeks.”

 

“You been countin’?”

 

“Maybe.”

 

“Three weeks, four days,” he corrects her and she’s stunned to realize he’s right.

 

The sound that comes out her throat isn’t graceful in the slightest but she doesn’t care. “Wait, so which one of us is doing the counting?”

 

“I told you,” he says again, and she glances out the window to watch the concrete blur by. “I had business. Otherwise, wouldn’t have been a day gone by I didn’t give you the pipe.”

 

He smothers her laugh with a kiss and for a few hours, there’s nothing but the sound of the air rushing across the aircraft outside and the sounds of her soft moans as he touches her in all the best ways.

 

* * *

“Your sister know you’re down here with me?”

 

Beth wipes her hands with a paper towel, exiting the little toilet on the plane as Rio readjusts the gun he has holstered in the back of jeans. It’s an ever present thing, that gold gun of his, and she thinks it’s interesting that it doesn’t make her nervous anymore. Had it ever really made her nervous? She’s reminded of a night that seems so long ago now, the necklace cool against her neck but that golden gun even cooler.

 

It was the first time Rio had ever touched her, she remembers. There’s an odd eroticism mixed in with her memories of that gun and of that night. But he’s waiting on an answer, so she shakes it from her thoughts and turns to him, a soft smile on her face.

 

“She knows I’m out of town. I told her I needed a break.”

 

He chuckles. “And she bought it? Just like that, huh?”

 

Beth shrugs. Truthfully, she had a feeling Annie knew exactly what she was doing, but Annie wasn’t the boss of her and she could do who and whatever she wanted. Or mostly, she could. A lot of what she did depended on whether the kids would be alright. Fortunately, they were more than alright with Rio.

 

“Probably not. But we’re here now, so there’s not much she can do about it. Think she’ll try to follow me down here and drag me back home?”

 

Beth wouldn’t put it past her, especially if Ruby caught wind of her little vacation and started putting ideas in her head. But she wouldn't worry about that now. Instead, she leaned toward the window and stared out at the small airstrip they’d landed on, at the impossibly blue sky and the palm trees and the bright sunshine. It was a world away from the still chilly cool of spring in Detroit. Beth knew it would be infinitely warmer when she walked off the plane, so she took off her cardigan and folded it across her arm.

 

The sun hit her eyes like a brick and there was a moment where she nearly stumbled off the plane, eliciting a laugh from Rio that made her skin turn red. But it was so warm out here, wonderfully so, and she stretched like a cat in the heat of the car that would take them to where they were staying. The driver had addressed Rio respectfully, in Spanish and once again as Señor Javarez, and Beth wondered just how far his influence and connections extended nowadays. They didn’t talk work all that much; he came to her for an escape, it seemed, so she never pushed. But she was curious. And that curiosity was even more pronounced as the car drove them through the city, through elegant and carefully landscaped neighborhoods, up a hill and to a large mansion that rested at the very end of a cul de sac.

 

Beth turns her head to Rio, who watches her with interest, gauging her reaction to everything.

 

“This is...yours?” she asks, stupidly, because unless he’s good friends with some incredibly wealthy mogul who didn’t mind lending him his mansion for the week, Rio had a shit ton more money than she’d thought. Would make sense, though, considering he’d dropped 20 grand on her without so much as a threat or any pressure to pay him back. Only the mega rich could toss money around like that and not worry about getting it back.

 

An apology and a kiss, she thinks, almost laughing. That’s all he wanted.

 

“Nah, not really. I have access though.”

 

He leans forward and presses close to her, letting the darkened window of the car down and pointing out the west wing of the large estate. “That little section right there? That’s mine and yours. The rest of it? Tío's.”

 

“Tío? Who’s Tío?”

 

He grins and unbuckles, slips out his seat without waiting on the driver and moves around the car to open her door. And he offers her his hand, like a perfect gentlemen, a little mischief in his eyes. She can’t help but grin back.

 

His hand is warm and heavy on the small of her back. He’s close enough to kiss, tangled in her personal space as if he’d always belonged there. The driver unpacks the little luggage they’d brought, all of it Rio’s because she’d followed his orders and hadn’t brought anything of her own. She had toiletries in her purse and a knife in her pocket just in case, but nothing more. And she wonders now why she worried about clothes or shoes or anything else when this man-charismatic, mysterious, dangerous, almost more than she’d ever expected-could literally buy her anything she needed without batting an eye at the cost.

 

Beth hadn’t ever considered herself a pampered, spoiled princess, but maybe it was okay to pretend she was if only for the week.

 

There’s another exchange between the driver and Rio as Beth waits patiently in the warm Florida sun. In the distance, she thinks she hears music, wafting over the rooftops and across the breeze that stirs the wisps of hair at her neck. If she listens hard enough, she thinks she can make out some of the words, though she only just barely understands a few of them. Her Spanish really is rusty, lost to years of never having to practice it except when the kids wanted to watch Dora the Explorer or on the occasional night out for Mexican.

 

Beth considers downloading Duolingo just so she’s not constantly outside the loop when she’s around Rio. And then she thinks about the idea of being around Rio enough that he’ll speak to her in Spanish, familiarly, intimately, and it tugs at heartstrings she thought she’d kept out of the way of whatever this was they had going on.

 

(Friends. That’s what he said, isn’t it? Friends.)

 

She sighs and tries to clear her head. There’s no use in dwelling on petty labels and insignificant details about what they supposedly were. She didn’t know and he didn’t seem to care and they were just doing...this. It worked, there was no use in trying to rock the boat and make it into anything else. So she just needed to relax.

 

It would be difficult to tell her heart that, though, but that was a problem for another day.

 

The double doors of the beautiful house opened and something changed in Rio’s body. She could feel it thrum through the hand he had on her back, see the lines in the corner of his eyes soften, could feel his entire presence lighten and lower into something far less intense than it usually was. She turns her head to watch his face, to watch as the softest, fondest of smiles curl around his lips and he looks so much younger even still. Whoever is walking to greet them-this Tío, she guesses-is near and dear to his heart. So she turns back and keeps her gaze level and her body relaxed and she lets her own lips curl into something like a smile. She likes to think it’s casual, open, warm, but not too familiar. She doesn’t know this man.

 

“Rio! How are you my boy?”

 

The voice is deep, raspy, the kind of gravelly that reminded Beth of the bottle of whiskey her dad had tucked under a little crawlspace near the stairs back home for years. It’s got a bite to it that she likes, warm like fresh bread, smokey and rich. And there’s a pair of dark, dark eyes looking at the two of them over that remind her a lot of Rio. Almost too much, she realizes, and she glances from him to the older man and back, making a connection, though she doesn’t know which kind just yet.Rio notices. He pulls away with a little chuckle and reaches out to hug the man.

 

"I'm good, Tío. I'm good."

 

It’s the kind of hug someone who hasn’t seen the other in far too long gives. It’s familiar and intimate and Beth thinks for just a moment that maybe this man is Rio’s dad, until she remembers him telling her something about his father having been killed when he was a baby. She racks her brain and tries to remember why the name Tío sounds so familiar but doesn’t have the time to find an answer because the man is talking again, this time while looking in her direction.

 

“Are you going to introduce me to your lady?”

 

Lady? Rio nearly blushes, his mouth pressed into a line, but there’s no anger there, just a little bit of embarrassment. Beth can’t stop her grin. She tries hard not to dwell on the title, but she loves the sound of it. Rio's lady just has a ring to it.

 

“Tío, this is Elizabeth.” A hand on her small of her back pushes her forward and Beth takes in a breath, and a whiff of good, heady cologne. “Beth, my uncle. Ricardo.” Beth’s mind finally makes the connection then. She mentally stores away the name Ricardo and offers him her hand. But the hand is bypassed in favor of a hug so tight it takes her breath away.

 

“Elizabeth...so nice to meet you.” It’s said in the same sort of intoxicating cadence as Rio gets when he wants to steal one of her cupcakes and it makes her feel so fuzzy inside. She likes this man, this Tío, already.

 

“Likewise.” When she pulls back she can feel all the tension she’d held in her body at the unknown seep away.

 

“Are the two of you hungry? I’m grilling and your Titi says I’ve made entirely too much.”

 

Rio laughs. “You always grill too much.” He looks over to Beth and catches her eye, the happiness in them contagious so that she doesn’t even bother to suppress her smile. “You hungry, Mama?”

 

She nods. She could use a little something in her. She hadn’t eaten since breakfast and that’d been just a swallow of coffee and half a danish.

 

“I do hope you like pollo al horno,” Ricardo says as he leads them into the house. It’s a slow, casual gait, the click clack of silver tipped boots along the marbled floors music to Beth’s ears. She barely noticed what the two men were chatting about, so caught up in the architecture of the home. The layout was wide and spacious, the colors nearly as warm as the weather and the man who owned the home. She let her hand slip across the plush almost too soft velvet of a beautiful deep red settee in the living room, trailed her fingers down the railing of a short staircase that took them into the kitchen and then out into a patio she’d only ever dreamed of.

 

The landscaping was incredible, the view even more so. From here, she could see the beach and the spread of people, little dots from this far back, as they sunbathed and swam in the Atlantic. Beth wondered if she could convince Rio to take her out shopping for a bathing suit. She wanted to do a few laps in the ocean just to say she had. It would be something fun to brag about with Ruby and Annie when she got home, after the inevitable breakdown they’d have when they learned she’d run off to Miami with Rio.

 

There wasn’t really a platonic explanation for this little vacation. And she was tired of trying to pretend there was any platonic explanation for her attachment to him anyway.

 

Music poured from the speakers as they exit the patio doors and walk toward the grill. In the corner, tongs in hand and hips swiveling, was a petite woman, barely five foot tall and shaped like an hourglass. She was older than Beth, but there was something incredibly youthful and vivacious about her, her short, dark hair spiked up on the left side and several piercings dotting her ear. She turns at the sound of their footsteps and smiles brightly, her eyes the sparkling blue green of the turquoise necklace she wears. There was a soft little cry and arms reached out toward Rio, tugging him forth and down until he enveloped her in a rocking hug.

 

“Oh my baby, how are you?” she coos, pressing kisses to his cheeks. Beth feels like she’s watching something she has no right to, but she feels like it’d be rude to look away. Instead, she glances over to Ricardo, who grins proudly.

 

“I’m good, Titi. I’m good. I missed you.”

 

“You couldn’t have,” she says, mock scolding. “You’d have come down and seen me sooner. How long has it been, huh? My last birthday?” She shakes her head and waves her tongs about, but her smile is back and she kisses Rio again for good measure when he tries to apologize.

 

“And you brought a guest, hm?”

 

Beth thinks she’ll turn red, but she manages to keep the blush mostly contained. “It’s nice to meet you,” she starts, as Rio’s aunt makes her way to where Beth stands, hands in pocket. “I’m Beth.”

 

“Beth! Short for Elizabeth, yeah? I’m Yenifer, but you can call me Titi too. Ah, you are _so_ pretty! Where’d you find this one, Rio? She’s got some eyes on her, my goodness. Pretty blue. And that hair. Are you a natural ginger?”

 

Beth tries to keep from laughing, bombarded with questions and smothered with hugs and kisses, but she can’t. And either way, it feels right to laugh. She chuckles a bit and smooths a stray strand back from her face. “I am.”

 

“Apparently, it’s brighter, but she don’t wanna let the red be great,” Rio says, teasingly, his lips curled into a sly little smile. It’s like sharing the best kind of secret between the two of them. She thinks back to their first night together and his fingers on her skin and how he’d nuzzled the red hairs between her thighs. And now she’s really blushing, because now is not the time nor the place.

 

He knows what he’s doing. Bastard.

 

Yenifer and Ricardo usher them to the large table in the shade as they finish the food, and Beth takes in a deep breath when she sits, looks up at the blue sky and the smattering of clouds as they float by.

 

“Whatcha thinkin’?” Rio asks her, his fingers under her shirt and tracing little soothing circles across her ribs. She leans in closer and waits till the breeze settles lest it blow her words away.

 

“Why’d you bring me here?” she asks him because she has to know his reasoning behind this. She’s meeting his family, two people who are obviously close to him, and she doesn’t even know what they supposedly are. Friends her ass. There’s something deeper to this and she’s dying to know exactly what. But she’ll be damned if she has to ask him outright. She doesn’t want to look stupid if he says something less serious than what this feels like.

 

And she realizes how very deep she is in this...whatever this is, because she’s thinking about how sweet his aunt and uncle are as they stand side by side and sneak in kisses like kids, and she wonders if she can have that, too.

 

Preferably, she notes, with Rio, but that’s dependent on a lot of things she isn’t in the mood to hash out right now. Right now, she just wants an answer to her question. She turns around in her seat and watches him as he stares off somewhere in the distance, toward the beach. He’s thinking and she worries if that’s a good or bad thing. He’s always thinking, Rio. He never seems to slow down and just be, but she finds she adores that about him.

 

It does exhaust her at times, though.

 

“Cause I wanted you to come with me,” he finally says, giving her no room for any other argument. There’s a note of finality in his tone. _No_ _more_ _questions_ , _Mama_ , she almost hears him say, underneath the simple statement. And for the time being, she figures she can indulge him.

 

* * *

  

Lunch is chatty and pleasant and Yenifer (Titi, Beth remembers to call her Titi) makes them appointments at the salon the next day for spa treatments and nails and hair. Beth doesn’t voice how very excited she is to finally get something done to her hair besides a deep condition in the shower and the occasional split end hunt. Instead, she thanks her graciously and pretends like she’s used to people doing things like this for her all the time.

 

She’s a pampered princess for a week and she’ll try to play the part.

 

It’s not as hard as she imagined. Rio leads her to the west end of the house and up two flights of stairs in the massive mansion to where their room will be. Beth corrects herself mentally-rooms, he’d said rooms-and tries not to gawk. Middle class in Detroit has nothing on luxury in Miami.

 

The bedroom itself is bigger than her entire upstairs. There’s a huge bathroom attached, complete with a large clawfoot bathtub that she has plans for the second she lays eyes on it. The closet is the size of Kenny and Danny’s room and the adjacent balcony spans most of the entire wall. It overlooks the beaches, right down to the water and Beth spends a solid twenty minutes just leaning over the railing, soaking in the scenery.

 

“I can’t believe you’ve never been to the beach,” he says, walking up behind her and wrapping and around around her middle. She settles into it, the heat of his body against hers welcome even in the warmth of March in Florida.

 

“Not one like this,” she clarifies, because she has been to the beach before, and several times. “Dean used to take me to Belle Isle all the time. And we went to Nantucket one anniversary, which was nice.” It had been nice, though they’d spent most of their time holed up in the hotel because it rained all the damn time. Beth wasn’t that fond of rain and never had been. It always seemed to spoil her plans. She remembered how it threatened to rain the entire day of her wedding, the first sprinkles finally falling right as they drove off toward their honeymoon. And then she thinks of their honeymoon, one week in Colorado Springs, which had been lovely.

 

But it wasn’t the beach. It wasn’t blue water as far as she could see and white sands and gorgeous sunshine. It wasn’t _this_.

 

“Car man wasn’t good for much, was he?”

 

Beth shrugs. She feels a little bit of defensiveness spike in her chest and she immediately lets it fade away. It’ll take her years to quit doing that, she knows. She’s so used to covering for him, for explaining away everything, for having the utmost faith in her now ex husband that it’s an exercise in patience with herself to root the practice out of her.

 

“He gave me my babies. That’s about all the good he did.”

 

“Hmm. Shoulda did more.”

 

“Well. I can’t argue with that logic. But I can’t go back and fix it, either. Though, if you’d been around twenty years ago, you might have saved me a lot of trouble.”

 

Rio regards her for a moment, then reaches up and tucks hair behind her ear. “Nah. Everything happens for a reason. Even the shitty stuff, you know? If you hadn’t married him you wouldn’t have your kids.”

 

That much was true. Her children were the only things out of that marriage she didn’t regret. And, she thinks as Rio twists that strand of hair around his finger, staring at her with his familiar smirk, looking at her as if she were the prettiest thing in the world, maybe Rio had been something good out of all of this too.

 

“I wouldn’t have a lot of things,” she concedes, and turns back to the beach one more time, a promise to go down to the water soon floating around her head. _I_ _wouldn’t_ _have_ _you_ , she almost wants to say. But she’s not ready to give herself away that deeply yet, so she pushes it down and keeps it locked tight and lets the warmth of his lips on hers drive all thoughts of what she should have done (could have done, would have done) twenty years ago away.

 

* * *

 

Yenifer gets her up at 9 am sharp the next morning, tells her to throw on something casual, and then laughs when Beth tells her she didn’t pack anything.

 

“So what did you sleep in, chica?” she asks, waggling her brows knowingly, and though she’s had four kids and was married two decades, she still blushes. This is ridiculous. The thought of telling Rio’s aunt that they’d spent most of that night testing out the plush mattress of their bed made her want to crawl under the floorboards. But a blush seemed to settle it. Yenifer laughed and waved her down the hall in the robe she wore and toward the other end of the house.

 

“The only thing I’ve got you can fit is a sundress. And it’ll be a little snug, but I’m sure you’ll manage.”

 

She does, but only by the grace of stretch knits and the fact that she’s down about fifteen pounds since last year. It stretches across her hips and boobs like a second skin, and she doesn’t miss the way Rio’s eyes gawk as she joins he and Ricardo at the breakfast table. It’s subtle, just a shift in his jaw and his eyes widen a bit, but she notices and it makes her grin. She leans over and pecks him lightly on the lips, getting a whiff of of his cologne, the kind she’s told him she loves the most.

  
"Good morning," she says softly, watching his pupils dilate a little in the bright morning light. 

 

"Morning," he responds, his mouth curling up as she pulls back. "What's on the schedule for today?"

 

"Titi is taking me to the salon," she says, glancing over to Yenifer who smiles approvingly. "Wanna come along?"

 

He snorts out a laugh and shakes his head. "Nah. Gonna visit a few buddies of mine with Tío. You two have fun." He turns back to his tea and fruit and she moves around the table to join Yenifer as she hunts her car keys. "But hold up, I almost forgot." He slips out of his seat and moves beside her, grasping her hand and reaches into his pocket. A thick stack of bills are pressed into her palm and he makes eye contact, his gaze earnest and warm.

 

"All of this is..."

 

"Mine?"

 

He nods and slips his other hand around her waist, his fingers digging into the flesh there with just enough pressure. "Don't spend it all in one spot."

 

Beth fights to keep her breathing regulated. "I'll try my best."

 

His grin is slick, a little mischievous. "I got one condition."

 

She nods. She can do conditions. She wonders what he'll want for this stack. It's got to be at least ten thousand, she thinks, fingertips grazing the edge of the bills quickly as she stuffs it in her purse. "Okay. What's your condition."

 

"Don't lighten your hair again, okay?" He narrows his eyes and waits a beat until she nods again in agreement. If the price for this little shopping spree is one little caveat on her hair color, she thinks she can manage. In fact, she thinks she'll do him one better. He'll get a surprise when she comes home from shopping. 

 

"Alright. Anything else?"

 

He shakes his head and leans forward, his body pressed deliciously against hers. She reconsiders leaving the house and wonders what it would take to stay home and test out more spaces in their rooms but she really really wants to get her hair done, so she pushes the thought aside. it's such a nice thought though, one that makes her breathing stutter when he presses a soft kiss to her cheek. Beth frowns and makes a little noise in the back of her throat. If he's going to get her all hot and bothered, he'd better come correct and kiss her right. "Just on the cheek?" she asks him, her voice light and breathy. He laughs and reaches up to her chin, his thumb sliding over the soft dimple there and he kisses her again, and this time on the mouth. It's slower, a little bit hotter, but still chaste in its own way.

 

Beth can feel his aunt and uncle at the table watching, and blushes clear up to the roots of her hair.

 

* * *

 

"I imagine you have questions," Yenifer tells her, an hour later as they're undressing for their waxes.

 

The statement catches her a bit off guard as most of their talk had been fairly neutral. Beth turns and opens her mouth to protest, but the woman seems to know more about her than she had already offered (how many kids she had, what she does for a living, how she met Rio-a very abbreviated and clean cut version) so she feels as though she can't lie. She could, but she's afraid it would offend Yenifer and she doesn't want to offend Rio's Titi. She likes her a lot already.

 

"I um...well, yes. But I don't want to pry."

 

Yenifer snorts and waves her hand. "Trust me, there's no prying when you're in a relationship." Beth almost cuts her off to correct her because she isn't in a relationship, not at all, they're just friends.

 

Right? 

 

She isn't sure anymore and it's making her crazy how confused she is. Instead, she decides to roll with it. Maybe Yenifer liked her so much because she thought Rio was serious. Maybe that would work for the week. They could go back to whatever they supposedly were. She wouldn't dwell on the fact that she really didn't want to nor did she know how she would. She wanted more. She wanted so much more and she didn't know how or if she even should articulate that.

 

"Okay so...what am I allowed to ask?"

 

Yenifer shrugs. "What do you want to ask, chica? I'm an open book. Now, I can't tell you anything about his businesses or what he gets into. I don't pay much attention to that."

 

More like she probably turned a blind eye, but Beth understood where she was coming from in a way. She had a feeling that if Sadie ever got involved into any gang related activities, she'd probably just not worry about it. She couldn't say the same for her own kids, but with her niece? Yeah, she'd probably turn a blind eye as well. And Beth knew more about that business than Yenifer probably realized. But she had to play it innocent, a little clueless. She couldn't let all her cards show so soon. So she started with the one thing that had been plaguing her since she'd met Rio, besides his name.

 

"This is going to sound really silly, I know."

 

"It won't, trust me."

 

Beth smiles. "Um...how old is Rio? Because he gave me his birthday-which reminds me, is right around the corner, isn't it?" 

 

Yenifer's eyes light up. "We've got to talk party plans, Elizabeth! I'm thinking of something lowkey on the patio, just a few friends, maybe a live band and an open bar. Rio doesn't drink much but his Tío loves his liquor. You'll help me plan, won't you?"

 

Beth nods along, eyes wide and face inviting because party planning is right up her alley and she loves the idea of planning one for Rio. Yenifer chats all through her waxing, completely distracting Beth from the pain of getting an actual Brazilian. She helps Beth pick out a gorgeous red nail polish during the manicure and talks her out of getting her hair cut into her usual curly bob, convincing her it'd be gorgeous long and in soft waves. And she coos in approval at the bright, gorgeous ginger hair color Beth settles on, the shade as close to her natural red as she can find in a bottle. Beth feels like a new woman when the stylist turns her around in the chair and shows her the new do, at least ten years knocked off the age she looked and felt. She couldn't stop the grin that spread across her face and ran her fingers through her hair excitedly.

 

"You think he'll like it?" she asks, as the valet pulls up Yenifer's little sports car and opens their doors for them. 

 

"He'll _love_ it, chica, trust me. He's always had a soft spot for pretty women and you're the prettiest I've seen."

 

She bites her lip, careful not to mess up her makeup and buckles in just as Yenifer starts the car. The engine purrs like a dream and the leather seats are buttery and luxe, and Beth sinks back into hers as if she does this everyday.

 

"Have you seen him with many?"

 

"No. He's always been a solitary boy, my Rio."

 

Beth didn't want to admit how much that comforted her. If (and that was a big if) he wanted anything more serious than friends with benefits, then she at least could assume he wouldn't be a womanizer on top of a gangbanger. She could handle a little criminal activity (or a lot...she had to admit that the lifestyle gave her a rush) but no cheating. No more.

 

Yenifer glances behind her and pulls slowly into traffic, then scoots off like a firecracker, making Beth's breath catch in her throat. There's a throaty little laugh from the older woman, who pats Beth's knee affectionately. "Girl's got a lot of get up and go, yeah? Ricardo got this for me last year. Was my anniversary present."

 

"Oh! It's wonderful, I-"

 

"You know, if you wanted, I could probably talk Rio into getting you one, too. God knows he could afford it."

 

"Well...yeah. He gave me 12 grand just to get a few clothes."

 

Yenifer shoots her a look. "That's it?"

 

"Should I...have asked for more, or..."

 

"Yes! If he's bringing you all the way from Detroit down here to celebrate his birthday-and that's what he's doing, trust me, chica-you should have at least asked for 20."

 

20 thousand. She had a feeling that number was going to haunt her forever. She shook her head with a laugh and unclenched her fist from the seatbelt. Yenifer had slowed a little, so there wasn't as much anxiety about a car crash to worry about.

 

"I didn't ask him for anything," Beth confesses, and Yenifer turns completely toward her, ignoring the fact that she was speeding down the street with cars on either side and in front of her. Beth stares resolutely at the windshield as if doing so would make Yenifer focus back to driving instead of Beth's allowance for the week. Or day...was it just for the day? Just how much money did Rio have?

 

"Why?!"

 

"I don't...I didn't think he would...I guess I just-"

 

"Elizabeth."

 

Beth stops her stammering and turns to Yenifer's incredulous but gentle face. "Yes, Titi."

 

"We've got to talk about how to handle my nephew, okay? Because I have a feeling you don't realize just how special you happen to be."

 

Beth presses her lips tight and lowers her eyes to her hands, taking note of the smooth skin and perfect nails, the likes of which she hasn't had in ages. Had she ever really had nails that beautiful? Had she ever spent 100 dollars on just a manicure before? Dean would have had a corollary at the thought. Rio wouldn't have even blinked.

 

And then she thinks of what Dean had done and how he isn't here but she is, that she deserves this and so much more. She smiles, finally, and turns to Yenifer and nods her head.

 

"Alright. Tell me how I'm supposed to...um, handle him."

 

Yenifer laughs and turns on her radio, vibrant music blasting through the speakers, and Beth laughs along with her.

 


End file.
